Google Is Using The Eclipse To Improve Its Machine Learning

The company's Making and Science Lab, a department dedicated to supporting science and engineering education, has recruited 1,300 volunteers to capture the phenomenon, each armed with a high-resolution camera and a telephoto lens. The group–mostly astronomy buffs and amateur photographers–are stationed along the path stretching from Salem, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina, where they'll be able to see the total eclipse as well as the corona, or the sun's tenuous atmosphere. This fleet of photographers will send their images to Google, which will use an algorithm it created to stitch the images together into what it calls an "Eclipse Megamovie" showing a time-expanded video of the total solar eclipse as it crosses North America. The idea is to gather a rich data set around the first total solar eclipse to cross a large portion of the United States in almost 100 years. Technology has changed exponentially in the last century; this rare cosmic event is the first time many will experience a total eclipse, and it's also an opportunity to experience it with new technology.