NASA will send a research plane to an altitude of 15,000 meters to study the Sun during the eclipse on August 12. Specialists believe that in this way the observation of the total eclipse can be extended from 2 minutes and 18 seconds to almost 3 minutes.
Two NASA pilots will take off Wednesday aboard a research plane from Iceland’s Keflavik Airport on a science mission during the total solar eclipse.
Their mission can be described as chasing the eclipse, but in reality it will be the eclipse that will be chasing them, The Guardian writes.
As the plane will fly at an altitude of 15,000 meters, the shadow of the Moon will quickly advance from behind at a speed of more than 3,200 km/h.
The pilots will try to position the plane so that it stays as long as possible in the area covered by the Moon’s shadow.
For those viewing the eclipse from the ground, totality will last approximately 2 minutes and 18 seconds. But by flying at more than 700 km/h along the path of the eclipse, the plane can extend the time researchers will be able to observe the fully covered Sun to almost 3 minutes.
This will give researchers more time to observe the solar corona and the phenomena that occur around the Sun.
Four cameras will be located in the front of the WB-57 aircraft. They will take dozens of images per second of the cloaked Sun, in different wavelengths of light. The images should capture large coiling ribbons of plasma, called bulges, as well as magnetic bursts called nanobursts.
Such observations are possible only when the glow of the solar disk is blocked by the Moon.
Rare opportunity for scientific research
“Solar eclipses give us the opportunity to conduct scientific research that we could not do at any other time,” says Amir Caspi, the mission’s principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Despite the name, nanoflares have immense power, each releasing energy equivalent to thousands of atomic bombs orbiting the Sun. For these observations, aircraft are hard to beat. Ground cameras deal with clouds and atmospheric interference.
The solar eclipse of August 12 will be able to be seen as a partial eclipse from certain areas in Romania. The “Admiral Vasile Urseanu” Astronomical Observatory has announced where the phenomenon will be most visible and what time it will start in different regions of the country.
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