The first thing you need are coordinates to the solar eclipse. We attained this information through NASA's Solar Eclipse Page.
Scrolling down, there are several links under the heading "Solar Eclipses on Google Maps." Clicking the estimated year of the eclipse will bring you to a list, where you can choose the exact date.
Click the link corresponding with your desired eclipse. You should see a page like this.
Clicking "by coordinates" brings up a query page where you can enter in the "Sun at Greatest Eclipse" coordinates (R.A. and Dec.) from the NASA Solar Eclipse Page.
In the scroll down window under "define a radius," we selected 2 degrees.
After submitting the query, a long list of stars and galaxies appears.
The hardest part is sorting through the list because most queries are galaxies or dim stars with magnitude 9 or lower.
A few hints when picking out the brightest stars:
We have found that stars with the Identifier that start with HD, HR, LTT, or have a constellation in the name (such as "HQ Psc" or "96 Aqr") are good indicators of a star with magnitude 8 or higher.
You can check out the magnitude of a star by clicking the star's link and looking at its V-Flux.
For the stars found, they were entered into a table using a simple text editor.
