Media highlights UMaine’s contributions to eclipse research
Media outlets including Portland Press Herald, ABC News, Smithsonian Magazine, New England Public Media, KTRE (Channel 9 Texas), WABI (Channel 5 Bangor), News Center Maine, Bangor Daily News, Maine Public, FOX 23, Voice of Maine, and WGME (Channel 13 Portland) highlighted University of Maine students, faculty and staff participating in the April 8 total solar eclipse. A team of students and faculty from the University of Maine 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.