A magnetometer and data logger are installed at The Cottage to collect data for Dr. Yuki Obana of the Osaka Electro-Communication University.
A magnetometer determines the orientation of the generated field, which is interpolated to determine the axis of rotation.
Acuña was a principal investigator on magnetometer experiments flown on numerous missions over the years, from the Pioneer 11 Fluxgate Magnetometer Experiment in 1973 to the Mars Global Surveyor Magnetic Field Experiment in 1994, and the MESSENGER magnetometer.
It was followed by other similar devices, including the ASUS Eee Stick, Sony's PlayStation Move (which also uses magnetometers to track the Earth's magnetic field and computer vision via the PlayStation Eye to aid in position tracking), and HP's Swing.
Because of a simultaneous "crochet" observed in the Kew Observatory magnetometer record by Balfour Stewart and a geomagnetic storm observed the following day, Carrington suspected a solar-terrestrial connection.