Sunny Bunnies

https://github.com/Drewbi/solar-survival

https://loom.com/share/7755311db4d2476f921536c462005235

Check https://solar-survival.vercel.app/ for the live demo.

This project is an interactive website, whose aim is to inform a general audience on effects of solar weather. While space weather can have harmful effects on our planet, we wanted to really showcase with this project that thanks to the hard work of many scientists and engineers, we are safe from the worst effects of harsh space weather. We also wanted to showcase data from various space agencies in a way that is easier to understand--emphasizing the use of images over charts, long paragraphs, etc.

Our main goal with this site was to make it interactive and fun, so that it is accessible to everyone no matter their experience with space. We chose to display space weather data on a website, as we thought this would be the best way to communicate crucial information to as many people as possible. We also believe that creating web pages is a highly creative process (can even be considered STEAM), so we wanted to integrate our passion for web design with our interest in space.

While this website is far from being finished, we have a good amount of tasks in our backlog to get it over the finish line. These are:

• Responsive design for mobile devices to increase accessibility to the site
• Performance optimisations
• More interactive sections: These include a mini game where we play as Earth and are dodging solar flares of different KPs based on Parker solar probe data, an interactive timeline of when we can expect another large CME like the Carrington Event based on projects made via data, and many more interactive ideas!

We used some of the most recent web technologies to create this website. Notably, we used React, TypeScript, Vite, styled components, Three.js and Vercel, which are all very popular tools in the web development field. We used popular technology in order to ensure that the site would be maintainble, and if other developers wanted to pick it up for development (maybe NASA? :D), it would be easy for them to edit/add new content from the Parker solar probe.

We also structured the project so that it is easy to make new content, so the website can always be kept up to date with all the data that the solar probe could offer!

• https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov: We got all of images for the Sun at different temperatures from here. We also gathered all of our data for the current weather of the Sun from here.
• https://sppgway.jhuapl.edu: Some inspiration from the data visualisation displayed here for our initial designs. We unfortunately didn't have time to implement these but it was still a great inspiration!

We wanted to share what we love doing: interactive and fun sites with a wealth of information. We chose the Parker solar probe challenge in particular due to its emphasis on creativity. It's always a great opportunity to be able to combine science with the creative arts. And what better way to do this than to make a website? Making a complete site with a lot of intractive components was definitely a challenge, but we both learned a about web development and most importantly, a lot about space weather. Any challenges we faced, we were always quick to discuss and find a solution that was a complete fix and not just a workaround. We divided up the work in a way that highlighted our strengths, which definitely smoothed some of the potential bumps on the road.

I would like to thank my team member Drew Alexander for being the greatest hackathon partner, and for always blurring the boundaries of code and art.

• https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov - data and images
• https://github.com/Drewbi/solar-survival - code repository
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ - for reference on implementing some of the code
• Weather icons original by Drew Alexander
• https://stackoverflow.com/ - for more coding help

#web_app #parker_solar_probe, #art, #3d