The U.S. Eclipse Megamovie in 2017: a white paper on a unique outreach event

TL;DR

The 2017 U.S. Eclipse Megamovie collected extensive amateur images of the solar eclipse, creating a high-resolution, time-sequenced record of coronal evolution that benefits both public outreach and solar physics research.

Contribution

This paper details the organization and scientific potential of the 2017 Eclipse Megamovie, a large-scale citizen science project capturing the solar corona during totality.

Findings

Collected thousands of images along the eclipse path

Produced a continuous, high-resolution record of coronal changes

Enhanced understanding of solar corona dynamics

Abstract

Totality during the solar eclipse of 2017 traverses the entire breadth of the continental United States, from Oregon to South Carolina. It thus provides the opportunity to assemble a very large number of images, obtained by amateur observers all along the path, into a continuous record of coronal evolution in time; totality lasts for an hour and a half over the continental U.S. While we describe this event here as an opportunity for public education and outreach, such a movie -with very high time resolution and extending to the chromosphere - will also contain unprecedented information about the physics of the solar corona.