VIIRS–Aurora–SatCam Citizen Science Project

In the last several years, next generation of United States polar satellites have produced unique data at night utilizing the Day Night Band (DNB) on the VIIRS instrument. It has been shown that the DNB can observe city lights as well as faint features such as the aurora. With NOAA-20 and SNPP a half an orbit apart (~50 min) opens up more opportunities to interactions with citizen-scientists observing the unique aurorae features, such as the STEVE (strong thermal emission velocity enhancement), which is a thin purple ribbon of light that can appear in the presence of an aurora.

This presentation will feature the initial results from a unique citizen-science proof-of-concept project cataloguing the Aurora Borealis with the SatCam App and VIIRS Day/Night Band imagery. The citizen science data collection will be commencing on 3 November 2018 at a gathering of Northern Lights enthusiasts called "Aurora Summit 18" (https://aurorasummit.wordpress.com/) and will run until 15 December, 2018. This 6-week period encompasses about 1½ lunar cycles with 2 new moons, or roughly 20 moonless (relative to NOAA-20 and S-NPP) nights. Using the SatCam App, participants acquire pictures and satellite images of the Northern Lights coordinated with JPSS-1 (NOAA-20) and Suomi NPP satellite overpasses. These observations will be uploaded and catalogued into a web-based VIIRS Day/Night Band (DNB) archive. These dates also coincide with the time when the Arctic is in near darkness most of the day, allowing for multiple instances of coinciding ground and satellite based observations.