Why NASA's jets are chasing the total solar eclipse
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- čas přidán 6. 04. 2024
- Solar scientists have been preparing for years for a 4-minute window, during the total solar eclipse on 8 April, in which they will study the sun's corona. Expectations are sky high for this total solar eclipse because totality - when the sun is entirely covered - will last up to 4 minutes and 27 seconds - the longest such period on land for over a decade.
To capture this rare event, two of NASA's WB-57 jet planes, equipped with special instruments, will follow each other at 740 kilometres per hour, about a quarter of the speed of the moon’s shadow, just south-west of the maximum point of the eclipse. At that speed, totality increases from the 4 minutes 27 seconds for those viewing it from the ground to over 6 minutes.
Amir Caspi at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, is in charge of an experiment in the second WB-57 to study the corona using a stabilised platform to capture images of the eclipse using both a visible-light camera and a higher-resolution mid-infrared camera developed by NASA. The latter will capture seven different wavelengths of light and help determine which structures in the corona emit their own light and which merely scatter light from the sun’s surface.
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Did one of those happen to fly up around the Ohio region April 8th? Kind of curious due to a two engine airplane flying over, shortly after totality in my area. The main reason I am asking is because there were a couple of abrupt maneuvers in it's flight path.
Even cooler is your project of repeated artificially produced solar eclipses!
Isn’t JWST an infrared telescope?
it would burn if it tried to image the sun
Old British bombers.
Earth is not a globe. You and I both know that the moon cannot block the Sun, only the Nodes. And Earth is still Flat....... Ancient people are right..
WHY CAN WE SEE THE MOON DURING THE DAY EXCEPT WHEN THERES AN ECLIPSE???? I DO NOT GET IT. COULDN'T SEE THE MOON BEFORE OR AFTER! WHY NOT???
Look close enough and you will see the faint outline on a clear day during new moon.
Here in New Zealand...some days im guessing like the other comment said here that on a new moon we can see the moon while its daylight...