BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — We are less than a month away from a solar eclipse that will have millions of Americans hating toward the sky.
On April 8, portions of western Kentucky will experience a total eclipse.
Dr. Gordon Emslie loves astrophysics. So much so that he and a group of Western Kentucky University students are working on an app to capture the eclipse.
The app is called SunSketcher and it will take 101 photos of the sun during the eclipse automatically. Using the app will be as simple as propping up a phone.
Shikha Sawant, the IOS Developer for SunSketcher, said “All you have to do is enjoy the eclipse after you prop up the phone. It’ll automatically start taking pictures.”
The app is designed to be used in areas where the moon completely blocks the sun, which for Kentucky, is in the western part of the state. The purpose of the photos is to capture a Bailey’s Bead, a phenomenon where the sun shines through a valley between two mountains on the moon.
Emslie, the principal investigator of the app, showed Spectrum News what a Bailey’s Bead looked like. He said, “If the sun was slightly smaller, that bead wouldn’t show up. There wouldn’t be enough sunlight to make it.”
The app will walk the user through a series of steps and ask permission to collect data.
Sawant said, “This page is basically asking the user ‘Is it okay if we can use these photos and send them to the server?’ Press yes, and it’ll automatically send the photos.”
The pictures will be used to measure the shape of the sun.
Emslie said, “We’ll have everyone with their cellphones along the eclipse path, each taking their own pictures when these beads appear and disappear, so we’ll get millions of data points which will help us define the shape of the sun.”
The SunSketcher team made shirts for the occasion, and the back features the times of the eclipse climax in certain areas. One of them is Paducah, which is at 2 p.m. central time.
But regardless of whether or not you’re seeing the complete eclipse, anybody can download the app. It is free and will be available before the eclipse on April 8.
The app will be completely anonymous, so if you send your data over, they cannot track your identity. It is available for IOS and Android.