Research, Science & environment

Megamovie video captures eclipse coast-to-coast

Volunteers across the nation uploaded close-up images of the sun's corona, providing a lasting archive for solar scientists

By Robert Sanders

August 22, 2017

The fifth version of the Eclipse Megamovie, released Aug. 24, collates photos of the total solar eclipse that traversed the nation yesterday.

4 p.m. 8/25/17 Update: A fifth version (above) was posted online on Aug. 24. For the latest version, link to the Eclipse Megamovie site.

2 p.m. 8/22/17 Update: A second, more complete version of the movie (above) was released Tuesday, Aug. 22, with much improved density and a full list of volunteers who have submitted images so far.

Berkeley — Last evening, the Eclipse Megamovie project posted a preview of the photos of the total solar eclipse submitted by a cast of some 1,500 volunteers spread out along the path of totality.

The crowd-sourced video is the result of a collaboration between UC Berkeley solar physicists based at the Space Sciences Laboratory and Google engineers, who developed the algorithm to stitch the images together.

Published after 7 p.m. PDT Aug. 21, the video shows a selection of images from these citizen scientists, giving an extended look at the sun’s atmosphere. They were algorithmically stitched together based on the time and location of the photo; gaps in the coverage are filled by the previous image.

As more photos are uploaded and processed, these gaps will be filled in and the movie will get better and better, providing opportunities for the scientific community to study the sun for years to come.

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