Sky Scientists to the Rescue! Researchers Chase Today’s Eclipse to Crack a 100-Year Mystery
Quick Summary
Today, a total solar eclipse is sweeping across Greenland, Iceland, and Spain. Scientists from around the world rushed to be there — not just to watch, but to solve one of the biggest puzzles about our Sun.
What Happened?
When the Moon slides perfectly in front of the Sun, something magical happens. The Sun’s blazing surface gets covered up. And for a brief moment — just about two minutes — a faint, ghostly glow appears around the edges. That glow is called the corona. It is the Sun’s outer atmosphere.
Normally, the corona is invisible. The Sun’s surface is so blindingly bright that it washes out the glow completely. Think of trying to see a candle flame while someone shines a flashlight directly in your eyes. That is what it is normally like trying to study the corona. An eclipse is like someone turning off that flashlight.
Scientists have one huge, stubborn question about the corona: why is it so incredibly hot? The Sun’s surface is already scorching — about 5,500°C (nearly 10,000°F). But the corona above it reaches temperatures of one million degrees Celsius. That is nearly 200 times hotter. It is like standing far away from a campfire and feeling hotter than the people sitting right next to the flames. It makes no sense — and physicists have been puzzling over it for more than a century.
Today’s eclipse is a rare chance to gather fresh clues. Researchers traveled from all over the world to Spain and Iceland. NASA sent one of its WB-57 research jets soaring to 50,000 feet — about as high as 50 Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other — to chase the Moon’s shadow through the sky. Student teams in Iceland and Spain launched a combined 86 scientific balloons. Cameras on the jet pointed straight at the corona. The balloons measured what happens to Earth’s atmosphere when daylight suddenly cuts out.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and its Solar Orbiter spacecraft also ran special observation campaigns. Scientists used computer models to predict exactly what the corona would look like. Then they compared those predictions to what they actually saw. That comparison helps them build better models of how the Sun behaves — and better models mean better warnings when the Sun sends dangerous storms toward Earth.
Why Does It Matter?
Solar storms are not just pretty auroras. When the Sun hurls giant clouds of charged particles at Earth, they can knock out satellites, disrupt radio signals, and even cause power outages. The better scientists understand the corona, the better they can predict when a big storm is coming — giving astronauts, pilots, and power companies time to prepare.
Scientists also point out that today’s eclipse gives them something no other tool can: an absolutely crystal-clear, unblocked view of the corona close to the Sun’s surface. Even the world’s best space telescopes cannot perfectly replicate what two minutes of totality can show.
About 15 million people in Spain and Iceland were in the path of totality — the narrow strip where the Sun was completely covered. Hundreds of millions more across Europe and parts of North America saw a partial eclipse, where the Moon took a big bite out of the Sun.
Big Words
- Corona — the Sun’s outer atmosphere, a glowing layer of super-hot gas that is only visible during a total solar eclipse
- Totality — the brief period during a solar eclipse when the Moon completely covers the Sun’s bright surface
- Solar storm — a burst of energy and particles from the Sun that can travel to Earth and affect satellites and power grids
- WB-57 — a special NASA research aircraft that can fly very high up into the atmosphere to collect scientific data
- Space weather — changes in the environment around Earth caused by the Sun’s energy and particles
Fun Fact
The Sun’s corona is so faint compared to the Sun’s surface that studying it is like trying to spot a firefly hovering next to a lighthouse beam. Eclipses are the only time on Earth when the lighthouse turns off!
Think About It
If scientists can figure out why the corona is so much hotter than the Sun’s surface, what else might that discovery teach us about other stars in the universe?
Sources
- NASA Science — ‘NASA Science Soars During August Total Solar Eclipse’
- Nature — ‘Solar eclipse offers rare chance to solve Sun’s magnetic-field mysteries’
- ESA — ‘Virtual totality ahead of the solar eclipse’
- Al Jazeera — ‘Solar eclipse tracker: What time will it hit your location on August 12?’
- Phys.org — ‘Total eclipse gives scientists chance to probe sun’s mysteries’