Keogramist: Explore 1400 Nights of Aurora on a Phone

Abstract:

The aurora research community has made full-colour all-sky camera (ASC) imagery available online for public outreach and education, providing a deep resource of archival material. Concurrently, modern mobile devices like smartphones have improved in capability, able to present interactive video and 3D content directly in web browsers. This work represents an example of citizen science in which an individual from another field repurposed, or ‘MacGyvered’, existing AuroraMAX ASC timelapse archive, to make over 1400 nights of aurora activity more engaging and immersive for users of mobile devices. The resulting ‘Keogramist’ web app is designed to be a visually intuitive gateway to explore and experience auroral activity. An ‘enhanced stacked keogram’ interface organizes aurora activity temporally, and enhances visible features using minor image processing. Users can choose any night’s keogram and replay and interact with the corresponding timelapse ASC video from a first-person perspective, emulating what a viewer would experience standing under the aurora and looking at the sky around them. Adjustable parameters can accommodate a range of existing ASC resolutions, fields of view, and replay rates, allowing other ASC archives to be explored in the same way. Scientific and public users alike may find the format beneficial as it provides quick, mobile review for events of interest. This platform may enable citizen scientists to interact with large amounts of data for image and feature characterization.