BOISE, Idaho — While some people across the United States will witness the total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, a group of University of Idaho (UI) students will be helping NASA gather data on the rare event.
UI stated in a news release that eight students will be traveling to North Springfield, Pennsylvania, to participate in the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP), which aims to gather data to improve weather forecast models and climate change mitigations.
NEBP teams stretching from Texas to Maine will launch weather balloons on Sunday and Monday. The balloons will stay in the air for 30 hours and "gather data on atmospheric disturbances produced during eclipse events, including gravity waves that represent a transfer of energy through the atmosphere."
"Knowing this is the last visible eclipse in the U.S. for the next 20 years, the teams we've trained nationwide are crucial to gathering the datasets we need," said Matthew Bernards, U of I College of Engineering associate professor and co-project lead. "The data will continue to improve long-term weather forecasting capability. Better prediction methods have global impact on agriculture, aviation and the economy."
The UI engineering students are the lead university team, and over the past year, they have been training teams nationwide.
The University of Idaho provided the list of students participating in the research event:
- Graduate Student Konstantine Geranios of Spokane, Washington
- Caeley Hodges of McCall
- Logan Kearney of Moscow
- Ashley Keeley of Mukilteo, Washington
- Cole Long of Boise
- Chase Long of Boise
- Shashwot Niraula of Nepal
- Will Schaal of Coeur d'Alene
To see a map of how much of the eclipse Idaho cities experience, visit KTBV's story here.
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