Google and UC Berkeley to Create Eclipse Movie From Crowd-Sourced Images
There will be more than a thousand amateur photographers and astronomers will contribute photos from along the entire path of totality in the U.S. to enable a Google and a University of California, Berkeley team to create a movie.
Members of not only Google’s Making and Science initiative, but also the Multiverse team at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory are working together in order to produce a high definition and time expanded video of a solar eclipse, using photographs coming in from more than a 1000 photographers and astronomers.
The group of volunteer photographers will be stationed along the entire path of totality of the eclipse stretching from Corvallis, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. The teams from Google and Berkeley will then stitch together the crowd-sourced photos to create a continuous view of the solar eclipse as it traverses the United States.
This is a special event, because of the fact that this solar eclipse is the first in nearly 100 years to be covering a major potion of the US. The basic goal of this study is to see how the sun’s corona changes over a given period of time. If you’re wondering what the sun’s corona actually is – it is the glowing outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere that extends millions and millions of miles into space. In normal conditions, the corona is not very clearly visible because of the intense light of the sun.
So scientists have to use radio-wave studies to observe rapid variations in it. But during a total solar eclipse, like the one on Monday, the corona becomes clearly visible and allows researchers to study changes using visible light, Google’s Eclipse Megamovie site explained. Data given from the amateur photographers and astronomers will not only give information about the current state but will also allow scientists to analyze the sun’s corona for years and years to come.
