Chasing the Shadow: NASA’s Jet-Fueled Quest for Solar Secrets

NASA’s WB-57 jets will capture unprecedented views of the 2024 solar eclipse, studying the solar corona and ionosphere to improve understanding of solar and atmospheric dynamics.’s WB-57 jets, which will provide enhanced views and data collection opportunities. These high-altitude flights aim to study the solar corona and the ionosphere’s electrical properties, offering insights into the Sun’s influence on Earth and aiding in the search for near-Sun asteroids.

During a total solar eclipse, the Moon perfectly blocks the bright face of the Sun, casting a small swath of Earth in darkness. With the Sun’s main light masked, the much dimmer solar corona becomes visible to the naked eye. This provides scientists a unique opportunity to study this mysterious region of the Sun. The brief blocking of sunlight also allows scientists to study how the Sun’s light affects Earth’s atmosphere.

Habbal’s experiment will fly spectrometers – which record specific wavelengths of light and cameras. The instruments will measure the temperature and chemical composition of the corona and coronal mass ejections, which are large bursts of solar material. With this data, scientists aim to better understand the structure of the corona and identify the source of the solar wind, the constant stream of particles emitted by the Sun.

For another team, led by Amir Caspi at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, it’s not their first time chasing eclipses by plane. Caspi led a previous trailblazing experiment with the WB-57s during the 2017 total solar eclipse that crossed America from sea to sea. Images taken from the jet were used to study the structure of the corona.

Source: Tech Daily Report (techdailyreport.net)

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