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NASA needs your smartphone during April's solar eclipse
(www.popsci.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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Oh dear, it appears the once-great NASA has now stooped so low as to beg for our outdated smartphones during this year's solar eclipse. It's a shameful sight to see the once-proud organization that sent men to the moon is now reduced to soliciting cell phones from the public just to carry out basic astronomical observations. I guess that's what happens when Democrats get their grubby little hands on things - they turn them into inefficient messes. How absurd that these rocket scientists can't manage a simple observation without relying on citizens' phones!
Did you read the article? Could you give a few quotes as to why that is your main takeaway here?
I feel like the comment was sarcastic. At least, that's how I read it in my head.
The problem is, this is how a certain demographic unironically thinks sometimes.
Nope, based on the user's comment history, they're a conservative nutjob.
No, this is not basic. I should really not engage with a troll, but for anyone else curious about why this is cool:
Current estimates on the size of the sun are on the order of +-1000km. "Wright said different papers using a variety of methods have produced results that differ by as much as 930 miles (1,500 km)"
This request for cell phone observations is trying to do some wild math way out of my comprehension, based on the flashes of light shining between mountains and valleys on the moon, to calculate the size of the sun down to single-digit kilometer accuracy. That's three orders of magnitude more accurate than our current measurements. And this type of measurement can only happen during an eclipse.
To me that is absolutely wild, good job NASA ๐