New Volunteer Data from 143 Observatories Unveils the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse ...Middle East

2 min read

On April 8, 2024, volunteers participating in NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie citizen science project all around the United States hurried to photograph the solar eclipse with the latest, greatest equipment, capturing groundbreaking images of the Sun’s corona.

Now, the Eclipse Megamovie team has released the remarkable new dataset that resulted from this effort — the first-ever, white-light eclipse dataset with calibration frames, spanning more than a cumulative hour and a half of observations of the solar corona. This data, which includes 52,469 total photographs uploaded by project volunteers, is now live: eclipsemegamovie.org/database. The data include contributions from 143 unique, mobile, volunteer-led “observatories” – people with cameras charged with taking precise images of the eclipse, taking extra steps to allow the painstaking calibration required to reveal how the corona evolves from one person’s view to the next. Researchers around the world can now use these observations to identify solar jets leaving the Sun’s surface and study how solar plumes grow and develop. The public can also peruse and download all of this data, which is highly accessible and searchable by observatory name and location.

“Thank you for all you do and have done for us,” said Eclipse Megamovie volunteer Jessi McKenna. “Everyone in the group has been amazingly supportive of each other. And those who are running things are always so obviously appreciative of everyone who has contributed to the project.” 

The files include data at three different levels of processing, from raw (level 1) data to calibrated (level 3) data, in a format called FITS, or Flexible Image Transport System. It is the standard astronomical data format used by NASA and the International Astronomical Union. Of the 143 unique observatories involved, 28 observatories had clear skies, sufficient calibration frames, and enough unique exposure times to create calibrated level 3 images.

The Eclipse Megamovie team at Sonoma State University and the University of California, Berkeley and collaborators at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center began working together long before the eclipse to construct this database, together with EdEon STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) Learning programmer Troy Wilson. But crucially, Eclipse Megamovie 2024 was made possible because of hundreds of volunteers who journeyed into the path of the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse with their cameras, patience, and curiosity.

Share

Details

Related Terms

Explore More

Map the Earth’s Magnetic Shield with the Space Umbrella Project

Use data from NASA’s Magnetosphere Multiscale Mission to shed light on solar storms. For anyone…

How Small Is Too Small? Volunteers Help NASA Test Lake Monitoring From Space

Volunteers participating in the Lake Observations by Citizen Scientists and Satellites (LOCSS) project have been…

New Software from the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast Initiative

Eighty-two volunteer teams with the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast (DEB) Initiative spent the day spread across…

Hence then, the article about new volunteer data from 143 observatories unveils the 2024 total solar eclipse was published today ( Tuesday 24/02/2026 - 11:16 PM ) and is available on NASA ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( New Volunteer Data from 143 Observatories Unveils the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse )

Also on site :

• Russia exposed plot to blow up Black Sea gas pipelines – Putin
• OpenAI COO says ‘we have not yet really seen AI penetrate enterprise business processes’
• Police: Two killed in shooting at West San Jose shopping center