Although August's total solar eclipse was over in minutes, analysis of the 50,000 photos uploaded to the Eclipse Megamovie website is a time-consuming job, so team leaders are asking citizen scientists for help.

The images have been put online at Zooniverse so that the public can scan and categorize them, a project dubbed Megamovie Maestros I.

Initially, volunteers are being asked to determine what the project's photographers actually captured by identifying eclipse phases, diamond rings, Baily's beads and other interesting phenomena.

The photos, snapped by thousands of recruited volunteers, have already been stitched together once by Google to create a first round extended view of the eclipse (aka the Megamovie). The Zooniverse project will help the team improve the Megamovie, and ultimately, better understand the behavior and mechanisms of the solar corona. Analysis of individual images will provide even more scientific data, according to the project team.

People who are more technically inclined are invited to dive into the project's entire image database to see what they can discover or create (see instructions here). That could mean constructing a collage, spotting an unusual phenomenon or even making a better Megamovie.

"It's a great way to relive the eclipse and see some stunning eclipse imagery, thanks to our oh-so-talented volunteers," said Dan Zevin, who is with the Multiverse education team that is leading the Eclipse Megamovie project at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory.

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August eclipse left a wake in ionosphere, researchers reveal
Washington (UPI) Dec 27, 2017
The August 21 solar eclipse caused waves in the uppermost part of the atmosphere, the ionosphere, which researchers say they were able to observe for the first time. The eclipse across North America was seen by millions of people, as well as by 2,000 positioning sensors installed across its path on Earth by researchers of MIT's Haystack Observatory and Norway's University of Tromso. ... read more

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