On Wednesday Sept. 14, a team of University of Wyoming students participating in the National Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) completed their last test launch in preparation for two upcoming launches set for the annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14, and the total solar eclipse on April 4, 2024.
The NEBP includes 55 teams of students from colleges and universities across the country, including UW, Casper College and Central Wyoming College. UW’s team, also known as the ‘Space Cowboys’ was one of 19 selected for the atmospheric science category.
Along with other atmospheric science teams, they will fly weather sensors known as radiosondes up to 115,000 feet above sea level for 30 hours along the annular and total eclipse paths.During this time radiosondes will measure temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed and direction as well as altitude, latitude and longitude.
The team is composed of eight undergraduate students and is co-led by main team lead Phil Bergmaier, a postdoctoral research associate for the UW department of Physics and Astronomy and a high-altitude balloon specialist with the Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium; Lauren Kim, a P.H.D. student majoring in physics, and Shawna Mcbride, a senior research scientist in physics and astronomy and director of the Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium.
According to an institutional communication put out by UW on May 8, 2023, Bergmaier stated that the purpose of the atmospheric science teams in the NEBP is to “attempt to determine how the total solar eclipse impacts the atmosphere … within the shadow, there is abrupt cooling of the atmosphere, which can trigger ‘gravity waves’.”
Bergmaier further said that “we hope to be able to detect eclipse-driven gravity waves in the upper atmosphere using our radiosonde measurements.” And that “the team will need data that is detailed in both space and time … (the eclipse) is a unique and rare time to study these phenomena, which can help scientists better understand the overall dynamics of the atmosphere and improve weather forecasting.”
In addition to the UW team, teams from Casper College and Central Wyoming College, which were selected for engineering projects, will be co-launching from the same site at Snow College in Richfield Utah during the Oct. 14 annular eclipse.
Bergmaier will be supervising the launches, saying, “I will be providing some assistance and guidance to these other teams as they learn more about high-altitude ballooning.”
The team will launch 30 weather balloons at the top of every hour before and after the eclipse in conjunction with the 18 other teams to gather what the UWIC calls “an unprecedented data set that will be analyzed for years.”
The 3 teams may share a launch location in Bluffton, Ohio during the April 4, 2024 total eclipse as well, but as of now, no updated information has been provided as to whether that is the case or not. Once both scheduled launches are conducted, the ‘Space Cowboys’ will begin extensive data analysis and organization, and will present their findings at UW’s upcoming Undergraduate Research Day.
