草莓污视频导航

May 27, 2019

Project opens a treasure trove of aurora borealis data to the world

Funding helps build AuroraX website for anyone, anywhere to discover data
When AuroraX goes live in about three years, there will be public outreach campaigns and programming for schools. The 草莓污视频导航's Eric Donovan expects that visual artists will also be interested in accessing the data from the 鈥渆dge of space.鈥 Photo by Chris Cully, Faculty of Science.
When AuroraX goes live in about three years, there will be public outreach campaigns and programming

For decades, researchers at the 草莓污视频导航 have been collecting data about aurora borealis 鈥 space weather created by solar winds in the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field. Now, with funding from the  (CFI), the province of Alberta and the Danish Technical University (DTU), researchers are building AuroraX, a sophisticated web-enabled platform that will let anyone 鈥 from a school kid to a computer scientist 鈥 access a vast amount of data about the aurora. 

鈥淲e have all these projects that make all this wonderful data. It鈥檚 very visual, rich and complex and it鈥檚 heterogeneous: it has all these different data sets,鈥 says Eric Donovan, co-director of the Auroral Imaging Group and professor in the  in the . 鈥淲e spent a lot of time, effort and money producing this data and we have some pretty cool tools that we鈥檝e developed for giving people access to it.鈥

Working with , the University of Alberta, and DTU, the researchers will build a website with 鈥渄eep links鈥 to data collected in dozens of research projects. 鈥淎uroraX  has a number of different components but right at the core of it is to take this massive beautiful data set that we have and make it much more usable for people all over the world,鈥 says Donovan. 鈥淭he idea is to create something that will knock peoples鈥 socks off and secure our place as the world leader of providing access to this data.鈥

The information comes from projects including

  • TREx, a vast network of instruments across western Canada recording optical and radio data
  • 狈础厂础鈥檚&苍产蝉辫; satellite mission studying sub-storms in the aurora and auroral arcs in the ionosphere, and
  • European Space Agency鈥檚  satellite mission measuring the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field.
鈥淪cience students to space physicists will use our data to do everything from space weather research to learning what鈥檚 going on with remote sensing in the magnetosphere to looking at the effects of the aurora on the atmosphere and what causes the aurora,鈥 says Eric Donovan.

鈥淪cience students to space physicists will use our data," says Eric Donovan.

Riley Brandt, 草莓污视频导航

When the  mission launches in the next few years, an ultraviolet imager will capture 40-hour sequences of consecutive global images of aurora. Donovan hopes that eventually, AuroraX will also link to  radar, satellite and other types of data that also informs research into the Northern Lights.

鈥淪cience students to space physicists will use our data to do everything from space weather research to learning what鈥檚 going on with remote sensing in the magnetosphere to looking at the effects of the aurora on the atmosphere and what causes the aurora,鈥 says Donovan. 鈥淭hen there will be computer scientists who would be interested in working on data bases, pattern recognition and visualization.鈥

When AuroraX goes live in about three years, there will be public outreach campaigns and programming for schools. Donovan expects that visual artists will also be interested in accessing the data from the 鈥渆dge of space.鈥 The aurora borealis 鈥 magnificent lights dancing in the night sky 鈥 have, after all, inspired artists for centuries. 鈥淭he data that we collect is very abstract. It鈥檚 beautiful but it鈥檚 abstract representations of the aurora,鈥 says Donovan.

The world-leading space physicist is also moved when he looks up from the data on the screen to the live show in the sky. 鈥淲hen I go out and see it it鈥檚 fundamentally different and I just enjoy it. I find it impossible to look at the aurora and think about my work.鈥

CFI funding was also recently awarded to Dr. Maribeth Murray, PhD, director of the Arctic Institute of North America, and the multi-institutional team of scientists and Inuit partners she鈥檚 co-ordinating through the  (CCADI). The Arctic research data infrastructure project they have developed.