{"id":724,"date":"2019-12-31T16:52:26","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T16:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurorasaurudev.wpengine.com\/?p=724"},"modified":"2023-12-26T21:50:39","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T21:50:39","slug":"it-takes-a-community-to-raise-aurorasaurus-gratitude-and-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.aurorasaurus.org\/?p=724","title":{"rendered":"It Takes a Community to Raise Aurorasaurus: Gratitude and Retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past decade, Aurorasaurus has grown from a persistent idea in the mind of Dr. Liz MacDonald to a worldwide initiative that has contributed research and discoveries to aurora science. At its heart, Aurorasaurus is a community effort, only possible through the contributions of thousands of citizen scientists, scientific experts, team members and volunteers. Explore the last eight years with us and learn how you can join in the next decade of discovery!<\/span><\/p>\n

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2011<\/b><\/h1>\n
\"Against<\/a>
Aurora in Independence, Mo., Oct. 24, 2011. Image Courtesy of Tobias Billings, NASA website<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Social media and solar storms<\/b><\/p>\n

On October 24, a solar storm filled the northern sky with aurora, its red colors visible as far south as Alabama. As the sky lit up, so did Twitter. For the first time in history, a solar maximum would correspond with social media and digital cameras. Dr. Liz MacDonald <\/span>remembered<\/span><\/a>: \u201cI had heard of Twitter, so I got online that night and could see a lot of people recording their observations.” The idea was born for a platform that would use the power of crowdsourcing on social media to collect real-time data about auroras.<\/span><\/p>\n

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2012<\/b><\/h1>\n

Incubating an idea<\/b><\/p>\n

Liz set out to make her idea a reality, securing seed funding from the Los Alamos National Lab and pulling together the first few people who would contribute to creating Aurorasaurus at the nonprofit New Mexico Consortium. LANL computer information scientist Reid Priedhorsky and summer intern Yan Cao from Penn State University\u2019s iSchool helped to create a website. A startup called SocialFlow had used Twitter to <\/span>map the 2011 East Coast earthquake<\/span><\/a> in real time\u2014technology with perfect applications for Aurorasaurus. Michael Chin provided access to tweets about auroras. By autumn, they had constructed a prototype that allowed citizen scientists to report their observations, as well as scraping crowdsourced data from Twitter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While numerous aurora-focused communities were already established, nothing existed yet to bring them together for a common goal. Liz envisioned Aurorasaurus as a way to advance science while building ties between aurora enthusiasts and the scientific community. As the prototype developed, many would join the effort and propose to expand the idea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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2013<\/b><\/h1>\n

Growing a team<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Ten<\/a>
The Aurorasaurus team checking out space weather at NASA’s Community Coordinated Modeling Center, June 2014.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In July, Aurorasaurus received a million-dollar, interdisciplinary, innovative <\/span>INSPIRE Award<\/span><\/a> from the National Science Foundation. With this, Aurorasaurus would launch at solar maximum, and take advantage of the peak in the Sun\u2019s 11-year cycle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As development began in earnest, Co-Investigator Michelle K. Hall of <\/span>Science Education Solutions<\/span><\/a> helped envision an educational component to the site. Co-Investigator Dr. Andrea Tapia from Penn State University\u2019s College of Information Sciences and Technology contributed much expertise from the human-centered computing field. She studied how the response to rare, large events like auroras could help in the case of disasters and the emerging field of crisis informatics. The Aurorasaurus platform and apps took shape with help from <\/span>Ideum<\/span><\/a>, under the guidance of lead developer David Kingman.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aurorasaurus reached new international heights when Liz won the <\/span>CASIS<\/span><\/a> “What Would You Send to the ISS?” contest. She proposed to send a geotagged camera to the International Space Station to record the Northern and Southern Lights from above and integrate the data into Aurorasaurus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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2014<\/b><\/h1>\n

Aurorasaurus hatches<\/b><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
The Aurorasaurus website in 2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A<\/a>
February 3, 2016: the red aurora view line adapted to include unexpected sightings. Case, N. A., et al. (2016), A real\u2010time hybrid aurora alert system: Combining citizen science reports with an auroral oval model, Earth and Space Science<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the project began in New Mexico and remains a New Mexico Consortium initiative, its network grew and new possibilities opened as Liz joined NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Nathan Case (now of the <\/span>University of Lancaster<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>AuroraWatch UK<\/span><\/a>) joined the Aurorasaurus team as a postdoc. A <\/span>prolific writer<\/span><\/a>, he produced early scholarly papers about the project, showing the efficacy of Aurorasaurus\u2019 approach of using tweets to track aurora sightings. These included the first demonstrations that:<\/span><\/p>\n