Google is undertaking a large citizen science project for the Great American Eclipse of 2017. The goal is to obtain photos from many different locations along the path of totality. The goal is to study the Sun’s corona in great detail. The corona is still not fully understood and most of our observations of it have been done with radio waves. The eclipse of 2017 provides a unique opportunity for many people to obtain data on the corona with visible light waves. Google will use the photographs taken all over the country and combine them together into a movie so we can see how the corona changes over a short amount of time. The data taken for this experiment will be available to the public as well.
Another goal of this project is to study the phenomena caused by valleys on the Moon known as the diamond ring. This will be done so that a more accurate measure of the Suns size can be determined.
To participate in the Megamovie project and learn more about the equipment required to take proper photos click here.