High-Level Project Summary
I developed a program that teaches users about solar wind and notifies users about the solar wind speed every 30 minutes for 24 hours via desktop notifications. I believe this program solves the challenge "Creative Data Display with the Parker Solar Probe". The program helps non-scientists understand what solar winds are and how it travels throughout the universe. It also gives solar wind speed updates every 30 minutes so that users may follow the difference in solar wind speeds as the day goes on. It is important for users to understand more about the concept of space weather so as increase the public knowledge about this phenomena. This is can be achieved by the program I have developed.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
I developed a program that teaches users about solar wind and notifies users about the solar wind speed every 30 minutes for 24 hours via desktop notifications.
The program contains:
- An infographic that helps the user understand what solar wind is and how it travels from the sun
- A notification feature which enables the user to receive solar wind speed and density upgrades every 30 minutes for 24 hours
- The program automatically closes itself after 24 hours as to prevent battery draining.
Benefits:
- Enables user have updates on solar wind speeds and density every 30 minutes. This allows them to understand how the solar wind varies as the day goes on.
- Minimalistic design of the program allow it to take less storage space in the users computer. This will encourage them to keep the program and frequently use it on a regular bases.
I hope this program helps people understand what solar wind speed is and how it varies throughout the days, weeks and months. This program will enable users to start being more passionate about the different phenomenas occurring in space and increase public knowledge about such concepts. Hopefully this program will be a stepping stone for future astronomers to code and build their own programs which allows them to follow their passion.
Tools:
- Integrated development environment (Visual Studio Code)
- Python core
- Python libraries (requests, Tkinter, playsound, time)
- Data from the internet (space weather.com)
- Canva to build the infographic used to display the definition of solar wind speeds
Space Agency Data
I have web-scraped data for solar wind speeds and density from "www.spaceweather.com". However I believe that this data is taken from "www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/real-time-solar-wind" which in turn has retrieved its data from NASA sources.
Hackathon Journey
My space apps experience was encouraging. It allowed me to learn more skills as a programmer and allowed me to refine my skills in writing code. I learn about various new space weather concepts and how there are many satellites monitoring the weather in space. I learnt about new packages and functions in python and how to retrieve data from the internet and perform function on it. I choose this topic as it allowed me to learn new concepts as well use my current skills to tackle this challenge. I tried to make my code as efficient and neat as possible by learning about various programming concepts. I had encountered many errors and setbacks while writing the code for the program however, I always received help from friends and teachers and researched online on how to fix problems. I'd like to thank my family for introducing the world of astronomy and inspiring me to join this challenge. I would also like to thank my teacher for introducing me to programming and teaching me various programming concepts.
References
https://spaceweather.com
https://streamable.com
https://github.com
https://www.canva.com
Tags
#code #space-weather #solar-wind #creative-data-display #notifier #program