21 August 2017
2017
USA
A continent-wide path of totality. Five coordinated sites between Oregon and Nebraska to capture a full-cycle corona.
The 21 August 2017 eclipse crossed the United States on an unbroken land path of some three thousand miles. The Sherpas occupied five sites between Oregon and Nebraska, repeating a core instrument suite so that cloud at one location would not erase the experiment.
The scientific target was a corona observed across a solar cycle of eclipse data: electron temperature distributions, ion charge-state evolution, and the thermodynamics of any CME fronts that happened to be in the field. Multi-wavelength imaging of coronal forbidden lines was paired with high-resolution white light.
It remains one of the most ambitious coordinated eclipse campaigns the team has run — a reminder that totality is brief, but the path can be used as a laboratory if enough people are willing to carry the instruments.