Eclipse 2017 Cross-Country Temperature and Humidity Tracking
On August 21, 2017, there was a total solar eclipse that was visible in the United States from coast to coast. While total eclipses are not especially rare worldwide, we do not get many that are visible in whole or in part across so much of the United States. As part of a "Citizen Scientist" outreach, NASA invited people across North America to take temperature readings around and during the eclipse event. In support of this effort, we worked with partners to deploy networked sensors along the path of the eclipse to take coordinated measurements of temperature and humidity. We collected those in real-time and displayed the results here during the event. Post-event, we've made arrangements to provide the data to NASA to be combined and analyzed with all other data reported across the continent. Our data is also publicly available from this site.
Participating Locations
We had hosts in the following cities and metropolitan areas:
- Seattle, Washington
- Ft. Collins, Colorado
- Boise, Idaho
- Lincoln, Nebraska
- Columbia, Missouri
- Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Pineville, South Carolina
- Washington, DC
The map shows these locations with an approximate line of totality for the eclipse. These locations experienced the eclipse in varying degrees. Among them, our headquarters location outside of Washington, DC had the smallest fraction of eclipse at about 81% of the sun blocked at the peak viewing time. In contrast, Lincoln, Nebraska experienced a total eclipse for about 3 minutes.
More Information
For general information about the eclipse, listings of local eclipse-related events, and discussion of science describing eclipses, NASA's Eclipse website is a great resource.
The specific effort that we're joining is part of the GLOBE Program. They take measurements all year, so check out their GLOBE Observer app for iOS and Android.
