The moon's shadow will pass over a wide area of North America during the period A total solar eclipse on April 8 NASA sends planes to chase him.
Two NASA WB-57 aircraft will follow the eclipse as it tracks The path of totalitarianism Throughout the United States, special instruments are trained on the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona.
By studying the Sun's electrically charged outer atmosphere and ionosphere, three teams of NASA scientists hope to better understand the structure and temperature of the corona; How does the Sun affect our planet's ionosphere? And spy on any Stray asteroids are usually hidden in the glare of the Sun.
“The eclipse is basically a controlled experiment.” Kondori spicesa principal investigator in ionosphere measurement and a research assistant professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, He said in a statement.
Climbing up to 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) above the ground, the WB-57s can soar above cloud cover and atmospheric particles to capture clear images in visible and infrared light.
Related: Total solar eclipse on April 8: Everything you need to know
Planes will time their takeoffs and flights precisely as the eclipse passes. It reaches speeds of 460 mph (740 km/h) to extend the total observed time by an additional 25% – making it approximately 6 minutes and 22 seconds. (For comparison, the longest total visible on Earth would be 4 minutes and 27 seconds in Torreon, Mexico.)
As they race alongside the eclipse's path to the east, spectrometers mounted on aircraft will measure the temperature and elements inside the coronal and its explosions, called coronal mass ejections. At the same time, the cameras will measure the light of the middle and lower corona to mid-infrared wavelengths, and take images at such high resolution that they could reveal a dust ring close to the Sun that is believed to be home to asteroids.
“By extending the total duration, we are extending the amount of data we can get.” Shadia HabbalThe researcher at the University of Hawaii's Institute of Astronomy and the lead researcher in one of the experiments said in the statement. “This light is the best probe we have other than sticking a thermometer into the corona.”
Finally, a third experiment will study the effect of the Moon's shadow on Earth's ionosphere, which will enable scientists to come back with an accurate measure of how charged it is.
“It gives us an opportunity to understand how changes in solar radiation can affect the ionosphere, which in turn can affect some of these technologies like radar and GPS that we rely on in our daily lives,” Kondori said.
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