NASA's Eclipse Megamovie Releases Extensive 2024 Solar Eclipse Dataset

NASA's Eclipse Megamovie citizen science project has released a new dataset from the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse. Volunteers across the United States contributed photographs of the Sun's corona.

The dataset, available at https://eclipsemegamovie.org/database, is the first white-light eclipse dataset with calibration frames, covering over 1.5 hours of solar corona observations.
It includes 52,469 photographs from 143 volunteer-led "observatories."

Research and Public Access

Researchers can utilize this data to identify solar jets and study the development of solar plumes. The public can also access and download the searchable data.

Data Format and Processing Levels

The files are provided in FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format, the standard astronomical data format, at three processing levels (raw to calibrated). Twenty-eight observatories provided sufficient data for calibrated level 3 images.

Collaborative Success

The Eclipse Megamovie team, comprising members from Sonoma State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, collaborated with EdEon STEM Learning programmer Troy Wilson. The project's success relied on hundreds of volunteers who participated in the eclipse observation.