Astronomers Want You to Help Spot Dangerous Solar Storms

Solar Storm Watch An image of the sun as seen by the SOHO spacecraft. NASA/ESA

Solar storms could wreak havoc on satellites and power grids, and so scientists have humbly turned to netizens across the world to help watch our sun for possible signs of such storms. Anyone who can spare some time from YouTube and Facebook also gets to peer at nifty 3-D images of the sun, according to BBC.

The plea for help comes from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, which has set up a Solar Stormwatch website for would-be Earth saviors. The website contains imagery collected by two NASA spacecraft that together create "stereo" 3-D images of the sun's coronal mass ejections.

A quick tutorial teaches netizens what to look in the image overload, so that they can tip off scientists about possible solar storms forming.

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Tags

Technology, Jeremy Hsu, coronal mass ejections, solar flares, solar radiation, solar storms, Space, stars, sun

Another crowd-sourcing effort led to a Canadian citizen's possible discovery of the first interstellar dust grains. So even if you have just an hour or two, try your hand at a bit of crowd-sourcing in the name of Earth defense. The Solar Stormwatch site is here.

[via BBC]