Using the content we post onto Twitter to extrapolate trends is increasingly common.  One of the more left field uses of such data however has emerged from a recent study conducted by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

It highlights how Twitter can be used to increase the likelihood of spotting the northern lights, as people increasingly share their sightings of the natural phenomenon on the social network.

The project is using citizen scientists and content shared on Twitter to help map the activity of the northern lights via the website for the venture.

The Aurorasaurus website (and app of the same name) allows users to report aurora sightings and provide a description and photo alongside their report.  It also offers up a real time aurora alert service to notify you when the phenomenon is visible.

Alongside these user generated submissions, the website also scours Twitter for aurora related tweets.  These tweets are then verified by a team of volunteered to ensure they are about actual sightings.  The project is using a team of human checkers because this kind of task has traditionally proven beyond automated means.

“Many previous studies have shown it’s very difficult to understand from a tweet what a user is saying, so the best way is to have someone verify the tweets as real aurora sightings,” the team say.

The initial months of the project have highlighted that Twitter activity tends to increase as the aurora strengthens, with Twitter content providing both specific information about individual aurora and also real-time information on when and where it’s visible.  Whats more, the data provided via users was more accurate than that provided by traditional models.

It’s hoped that this swathe of data will eventually be put to use in improving these models so that professional scientists are better able to forecast such events.  It’s also hoped that the data could be used to better understand the impact solar storms has on the Earth’s magnetic field.