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Johns Hopkins APL Staffers Employ EZIE-Mag to Track Solar Eclipse
Christine Piatko, a principal research scientist at APL, said she brought an EZIE-Mag while traveling to New York state to help contribute to the EZIE mission.
Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Christine Piatko
Staff members from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, brought more than just eclipse glasses when traveling to view the total solar eclipse on April 8. They packed their own miniature magnetometers as well.
Later this year, the team behind NASA’s Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission will build and freely distribute around 700 magnetometer kits, nicknamed EZIE-Mag, to students and teachers across the United States, focusing on Indigenous communities.
But the total solar eclipse — the first visible in the U.S. since 2017 — presented the EZIE team with a unique opportunity to test EZIE-Mag’s capabilities through a grassroots effort involving several Lab staff members.
More than 20 APLers who traveled to the eclipse’s path of totality brought EZIE-Mags to measure the magnetic field signature associated with electrical currents that scientists speculate were generated as the Moon glided between the Sun and Earth, and briefly darkened the sky.
“It’s awesome that at APL, we get to work with people from all walks of life willing to come together to support this project,” said Rafael Mesquita, a space physicist on the EZIE team who helped organize the initiative.
EZIE-Mag and the Mission
The EZIE mission, scheduled to launch this year, will measure the auroral electrojets, electrical currents that flow between Earth and space. Three CubeSats, satellites each the size of a small suitcase, will travel pole to pole to image these magnetic fingerprints, providing insights into Earth’s magnetosphere and space weather — phenomena fueled by the Sun — including auroras and geomagnetic storms.
“EZIE will not just solve decades-old mysteries about how these currents connect Earth to space, but provide students and citizen scientists with an opportunity to participate in a NASA mission through the EZIE-Mag program,” said APL’s Nelli Mosavi-Hoyer, project manager for EZIE.
While EZIE will fly 260-390 miles (420-630 kilometers) above Earth’s surface measuring the electrical currents, EZIE-Mag units will measure magnetic currents from the ground, helping to provide scientists with a comprehensive picture of how these currents impact Earth.
Rafael Mesquita, a space physicist on the EZIE team, traveled to Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila, in Mexico, to view the total solar eclipse and collect data with EZIE-Mag.
Credit: Liliana Zarate
An Early Test
During the eclipse, the magnetometers attempted to measure interhemispheric currents, streams of electrical charge created when the Moon passes in front of the Sun and shrouds locations in darkness.
“There is a long-standing theory that electrical currents will flow between the region of the solar eclipse along Earth’s magnetic field lines to the opposite hemisphere,” said Jesper Gjerloev, EZIE project scientist at APL who helped create EZIE-Mag. “It’s a fundamental process in the Earth-space system that the solar eclipse allows us to check. However, just because it seems logical to us does not mean nature agrees, so we should check.”
Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Lynn Oliver
Photons from the Sun strike molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, generating charged particles that create electrical currents. That process essentially comes to a halt in the areas where the Moon briefly blocks the Sun during a total solar eclipse.
But to get those measurements, the EZIE team needed volunteers. That’s when Mesquita sent an APL-wide message, reaching out to staff traveling for the eclipse to gauge interest in bringing along an EZIE-Mag for testing.
Mesquita expected a few responses. He received nearly 30. “People said ‘I’m going to this place, I’m going to that place,’ and it turned out we actually could cover a large portion of the track of totality, which is awesome,” he said.
APL staff members who participated in the EZIE-Mag test run traveled with their own magnetometer kit to their viewing destination, placed the kit outdoors and then collected data throughout the eclipse.
Christine Piatko, an APL principal research scientist, traveled to Walworth, New York, to watch the eclipse — and help capture data.
“We were planning to go see totality, and the EZIE-Mag was appealing to me, knowing I could contribute to some science,” said Piatko.
Neda Behrooz, a software systems engineer, originally planned on viewing the eclipse with EZIE-Mag in Waco, Texas, before a cloudy weather forecast detoured her to Pencil Bluff, Arkansas.
“Getting the opportunity to contribute to a scientific project like EZIE-Mag was fascinating for me,” Behrooz said. “It was an amazing experience.”
What’s Next For EZIE-Mag?
Now that all the magnetometers have returned to APL, members of the EZIE team will analyze the data recorded during the eclipse. The first mass release of EZIE-Mag kits is expected in September, ahead of the scheduled mission launch.
Gjerloev sees EZIE-Mag as an opportunity to awaken interest in science among students, particularly in Indigenous and underserved communities, and to provide awareness of Earth’s relationship with the Sun and space.
“EZIE-Mag allows citizen scientists to actively engage in a scientific experiment, make measurements and learn more about how our world interacts with the surrounding space,” he said.
The EZIE mission is funded by the Heliophysics Division within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. EZIE is led by APL, which designed, built, and manages the mission, in collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) in Boulder, Colorado.