It is too bad we are near a minimum in the solar activity calendar. The flares at totality would have been a lot more impressive.
In 2024, next US-visible eclipse, a better-decorated solar corona may be seen. That relates to strength of next solar cycle. In other words, here we go again...
More broadly, current solar cycle minimum is great for orbiting satellites that can spend less propellant opposing atmospheric drag. Not entirely a bad thing.
I'm just back from Weiser, Idaho, which also happened to be one of the NSO (National Solar Observatory) Citizen CATE sites (Citizen CATE Combines Eclipse Observations from 68 Sites to Create Unprecedented View of the Solar Atmosphere - National Solar Observatory - Eclipse). That image looks something like the composite images the CATE data should be producing. According to an NSO presentation at Weiser High School the evening before, their scopes and imagers would take a repeating series of shots spanning from 0.3ms to 1300ms, the later catching the earthshine on the moon's dark face. Having been off-line for three back-to-back trips, I'm not yet caught up on much. CATE was intending to post a 93 minute movie of the solar corona, stitched together from its 68 observing sites. Weiser's observing conditions were great. The thin high clouds of Sunday vanished Monday morning, and the wildfire smoke stayed away until Tuesday. And the festive crowd was less than they prepared for, so nothing got out of hand. The only downside was that this was the shortest 2 minutes of my life, I couldn't take in all there was to see and experience.
Has been explained in eclipse coverage, but possibly lost amid many other things: Solar satellites are very good at observing corona, but (because optical equipment is not perfect) their 'blocking disks' need to be large. So they cannot image corona close to sun's surface. When the moon hits its spot, it acts as a far superior blocking disk. This CATE movie ought to be great. Certainly beyond anything that has been attempted before. Incidentally the 2024 eclipse will have longer totality through the US. One hopes for megamovie 2. === Can think of these alignments in a different way. Moon is always casting eclipse shadow, but Earth is usually not in the right spot. It is thus possible to place a satellite in the right spot to observe corona almost continuously. However this station keeping would require large amounts of fuel for repositioning. I suppose it is impractical with current technology. Plus when Earth moves towards the shadow spot, satellite would have to scoot out of the way. If you remember Lagrangian points, by my questionable calculations, Mercury's L2 is almost at correct place to use that planet as a sun blocker. If correct, a solar corona observatory near there would be much more fuel efficient. Fun stuff to think about.
The presenter illustrated this with a previous lunar eclipse corona image, superimposed on a SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Homepage) corona image. There was a lot of corona in there where SOHO is blind. Young budding scientists, please take note of this project idea. BTW, This project was partly inspired by an astronomer who stumbled on a box of equipment in a basement somewhere. Brushing off the dust, he discovered that is was instrumentation from a 1965 eclipse, shipped home and never used again. A travesty. The CATE equipment is being left with the college and high school hosts of each site, in hopes of inspiring and kick-starting more astronomy programs and science projects, whether individual or networked with other CATE hosts. This is something like $270k of stuff, including 80mm scopes and 5MP but high dynamic range imagers. The whole CATE program cost under $900k, a bargain according to the presenter. I don't recall if that figure includes donations from business and the other non-government sources.
"Young budding scientists". Not to diminish PriusChat, but most of them are not here. But Fred Espenak (Dr. Eclipse!) and Earth and Sky will get emails, and they have big footprints. "CATE equipment". Wishing them well, at very least to keep things in good condition. Seven years later, hook up with other schools along that totality path.
Any nearby planet would work if the satellite has a highly elliptical orbit. At the extreme, the bird is moving slowly which could give many observation opportunities. Of course not having moon(s) might help in orbit keeping. Bob Wilson
Just a little bit put together so far, but enough to see motion in some streamers: Citizen CATE <dot> org: Page Some other citizen science projects, some for this eclipse and some others: NASA: Citizen Science | Total Solar Eclipse 2017
Edmund Halley (comet guy) eclipse maps: How Edmond Halley Kicked Off the Golden Age of Eclipse Mapping - Atlas Obscura He was 'flavour of the month' for a quite long time. Also believed in a partially hollow (potentially occupiable) Earth towards the end of times when thinking folks could entertain such views. If your science teachers left an impression that scientists are drab, your education is incomplete. Better not say the field does and has contained whackdoodles. Let's just say 'colourful'.
Um, yeah. Those dirty snowballs are in need of a good cleaning: Bill Haley and his bad also seem colourful even in B&W
