Aurorasaurus citizen science data is a collection of auroral sightings submitted to the project via its website (aurorasaurus.org) or apps and mined from social media. It is a robust data set and particularly abundant during strong geomagnetic storms. This data is offered to the scientific community for research use through an open-access database in its raw and scientific formats for the 2015-2016 period, each of which is described in detail in the following technical report:
\n\nKosar, B. C., MacDonald, E. A., Case, N. A., & Heavner, M. (2018). Aurorasaurus Database of Real\u2010Time, Crowd\u2010Sourced Aurora Data for Space Weather Research. Earth and Space Science, 5(12), 970-980.
\n\nFor more information on the project, please contact the project leaders at aurorasaurus.info@gmail.com.
\n\n", "languages": [ { "id": "eng", "title": { "en": "English" } } ], "publication_date": "2018-05-29", "publisher": "Zenodo", "references": [ { "reference": "MacDonald et al., (2015), Aurorasaurus: A citizen science platform for viewing and reporting the aurora, doi:10.1002/2015SW001214" }, { "reference": "Case et al. (2015a), Mapping auroral activity with Twitter, doi:10.1002/2015GL063709" }, { "reference": "Case et al. (2015b), Aurorasaurus and the St Patrick's Day storm, doi:10.1093/astrogeo/atv089" }, { "reference": "Case et al. (2016a), Using citizen science reports to define the equatorial extent of auroral visibility, doi:10.1002/2015SW001320" }, { "reference": "Case et al. (2016b), A real\u2010time hybrid aurora alert system: Combining citizen science reports with an auroral oval model, doi:10.1002/2016EA000167" }, { "reference": "Case et al. (2016c), Determining the Accuracy of Crowdsourced Tweet Verification for Auroral Research, doi:10.5334/cstp.52" }, { "reference": "MacDonald et al., (2018), New science in plain sight: Citizen scientists lead to the discovery of optical structure in the upper atmosphere, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaq0030" }, { "reference": "Kosar et al., (2018), A case study comparing citizen science aurora data with global auroral boundaries derived from satellite imagery and empirical models, doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2018.05.006" } ], "resource_type": { "id": "dataset", "title": { "de": "Datensatz", "en": "Dataset" } }, "rights": [ { "description": { "en": "" }, "icon": "cc-by-nc-icon", "id": "cc-by-nc-4.0", "props": { "scheme": "spdx", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode" }, "title": { "en": "Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International" } } ], "subjects": [ { "subject": "Aurorasaurus" }, { "subject": "aurora" }, { "subject": "citizen science" }, { "subject": "space weather" }, { "subject": "northern lights" }, { "subject": "Twitter" } ], "title": "Aurorasaurus Real-Time Citizen Science Aurora Data", "version": "v1.0" }, "parent": { "access": { "owned_by": { "user": "47128" }, "settings": { "accept_conditions_text": null, "allow_guest_requests": false, "allow_user_requests": false, "secret_link_expiration": 0 } }, "communities": { "entries": [ { "access": { "member_policy": "open", "members_visibility": "public", "record_submission_policy": "open", "review_policy": "open", "visibility": "public" }, "children": { "allow": false }, "created": "2017-06-05T00:52:28.114706+00:00", "custom_fields": {}, "deletion_status": { "is_deleted": false, "status": "P" }, "id": "6c1390ee-f4ed-452b-b2d2-94d4e410cc24", "links": {}, "metadata": { "curation_policy": "
Any paper related to the subject of citizen science, whether by professional scientists or citizen scientists. Descriptions of specific citizen science projects are especially welcome.
\r\n", "description": "For anyone involved with citizen or community science, as it is sometimes referred to. One definition (and there are many) might be: any non-scientist practicing the scientific method under the mentorship of a scientist.", "page": "", "title": "Citizen Science " }, "revision_id": 0, "slug": "citizenscience", "updated": "2018-04-16T19:02:28.971443+00:00" }, { "access": { "member_policy": "open", "members_visibility": "public", "record_submission_policy": "open", "review_policy": "open", "visibility": "public" }, "children": { "allow": false }, "created": "2025-08-08T21:52:12.278746+00:00", "custom_fields": {}, "deletion_status": { "is_deleted": false, "status": "P" }, "id": "98bcc82f-5c90-4f53-82ab-680399bf86fa", "links": {}, "metadata": { "curation_policy": "TBD
", "description": "An open community for those working in aurora citizen science to share. Founded by the Aurorasaurus project and open to all!", "page": "This is a community set up to encourage open science and a home for auroral citizen science efforts (data, software, papers, presentations, and more) across the world. The Aurorasaurus project has set this up but it is open to all.
", "title": "Aurora Citizen Science", "type": { "id": "topic" } }, "revision_id": 5, "slug": "auroracitsci", "updated": "2025-08-08T21:59:05.583626+00:00" }, { "access": { "member_policy": "open", "members_visibility": "public", "record_submission_policy": "open", "review_policy": "open", "visibility": "public" }, "children": { "allow": false }, "created": "2016-07-07T00:56:48+00:00", "custom_fields": {}, "deletion_status": { "is_deleted": false, "status": "P" }, "id": "f55b0eac-f9ba-449a-b93e-4abaa5754643", "links": {}, "metadata": { "curation_policy": "A typical work for this community is one that would go into JGR: Space Physics, IEEE TGRS, AGU Earth and Space Science, the CEDAR Workshop or GEM workshop, AGU Fall Meeting SPA section, EGU, URSI or similar in geospace. Perhaps you have a dataset, program, notes, white paper, manuscript, abstract, etc. in this topic area.
\r\n\r\nPlease consider if your work is more oriented towards Astronomy. For example, if your work is about discovering exoplanets via Doppler spectroscopy of stellar spectrum, maybe it's more Astronomy-oriented. If your work is about aurora or magnetospheres of exoplanets, or even intergalactic magnetic fields, then perhaps it would belong in this community.
\r\n\r\nPlease feel free to send a note to the Space Physics curation team if you're not sure if your work fits here or you don't understand why a work was rejected. Note that rejected works still show in Zenodo, just not in this community.
\r\n", "page": "Space Physics: Aeronomy.
\r\n\r\nNote that this is not a general Astronomy, Cosmology, String Theory, et al group.
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