A Planning Workshop for Observations and Outreach Activities During the Total Solar Eclipse of 21 August 2017; Boulder, Colorado; April 9-11, 2012

American Astronomical Society, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The principal invesitgators are members of a committee convening a planning workshop to prepare for the rare total solar eclipse that will traverse the US continent on 21 August 2017. The workshop will be held April 9-11, 2012, at the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, and will bring together eclipse experts and scientists to plan for this 2017 event. The workshop wii allow plans to be developed to capitalize on the unique scientific and public outreach potential of the 2017 eclipse. By traversing the extended US landmass, the shadow band of the 2017 eclipse will provide almost uninterrupted observations of the solar corona over 90 minutes, from its start in the northwest to its end in the southeast. Such a span will provide the opportunity to capture the temporal variations and spatial characteristics of coronal structures on times scales of fractions of seconds, to minutes, to over an hour. Since a number of identical experiments can be set up along the path of totality to maximize chances of success, the 2017 eclipse promises an optimal scientific yield. The broader impact of this activity will be in its ability to spark the interest of the public at large and to entice them to take part in exploratory and discovery opportunities. This workshop will provide the first meeting for specialists to collectively develop ideas for public experiments and outreach that would fully exploit the 90 minute duration of this 2017 event across the USA, and involve a significant fraction of the national population, as well as a large number of visitors from abroad. In addition, the workshop will allow planning for eclipse observations that will test new technologies and concepts for later incorporation in ground-based and space-based observatories.