Media highlights UMaine’s contributions to eclipse research
Media outlets including , , , , (Channel 9 Texas), (Channel 5 Bangor), , , , , , and (Channel 13 Portland) highlighted °µÍø¸£Àûapp students, faculty and staff participating in the April 8 total solar eclipse. A team of students and faculty from the °µÍø¸£Àûapp launched a high altitude balloon that livestreamed the eclipse. Cameras were attached to the balloon, which traveled about 90,000 feet into the stratosphere. UMaine junior Noah Lambert said the goal of the project was to capture the moon’s shadow as it moves across the earth. Meanwhile, Versant Power Astronomy Center Shawn Laatsch, Ph.D. student Nikita Saini and other UMaine graduate students were in Jackman, Maine collecting images of the eclipse. Laatsch and Saini trained groups of citizen scientists around the country to also collect eclipse images as part of a nationwide project led by the Southwest Research Institute called the Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE2024) experiment.