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Paper: Eclipse Megamovie 2017 Successes and Potential For Future Work
Volume: 516, Celebrating the 2017 Great American Eclipse: Lessons Learned from the Path of Totality
Page: 337
Authors: Peticolas, L.; Hudson, H.; Johnson, C.; Zevin, D.; White, V.; Oliveros, J. C. M.; Ruderman, I.; Koh, J.; Konerding, D.; Bender, M.; Cable, C.; Kruse, B.; Yan, D.; Krista, L.; Collier, B.; Fraknoi, A.; Pasachoff, J. M.; Filippenko, A. V.; Mendez, B.; McIntosh, S. W.; Filippenko, N. L.
Abstract: In 2011, an “Eclipse Megamovie” was envisioned for the 2017 total solar eclipse that would be created using the public's photographs of the Sun's corona as frames in a movie illuminating dynamic changes in the chromosphere and corona. On August 21, 2017, our team collected photographs of the total solar eclipse from thousands of volunteers with telescopes, DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) cameras, and mobile device cameras setup across the path of totality. Our efforts resulted in 1,190 photographers contributing 50,016 DSLR photographs in a final open-source, public archive that is 766 GB in size. All photographs in this archive are Creative Commons zero (CC0), making them freely available for public use. From mobile devices, we obtained an archive of 60,000 images, 211 GB in size. The first Eclipse Megamovie video was compiled and made available to the public a few hours after the Moon's shadow left the U.S. East Coast. For two weeks, additional images were added to this video, as volunteers uploaded them to the project server. The project also resulted in a comprehensive website with 12,749 users sufficiently interested in the project to each create a user profile on the website, several short documentaries, 190 articles and press releases, open-source code for use in future related efforts, and hundreds of public presentations across the country prior to the eclipse. Information on how to access these resources is included in this paper.
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