Jakarta –
A total solar eclipse will darken a number of areas of the Earth on April 8 2024 because the Moon blocks the Sun’s light for several minutes. NASA has prepared a number of scientific experiments for this event.
As quoted from SpaceRef, the US national space agency will fund five interdisciplinary science projects to make the best use of this opportunity.
The project, led by researchers at various academic institutions, will study the Sun and its influence on Earth with a variety of instruments, including cameras on high-altitude research aircraft, amateur radio, and more. Two of the projects also encourage the participation of civilian scientists.
“Seven years after America’s last total solar eclipse, we are excited to announce five new projects that will study the 2024 eclipse,” said Peg Luce, acting director of the Heliophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“We are excited to see what this new experiment will reveal about our Sun and its impact on Earth,” he continued.
During a total solar eclipse, the Moon perfectly blocks the Sun’s surface, so that the Sun’s thin outer atmosphere, called the corona, can be seen clearly.
“Scientists have long used solar eclipses to make scientific discoveries,” said Kelly Korreck, program scientist at NASA Headquarters.
“The solar eclipse has helped us make the first detection of helium, given us evidence of the general theory of relativity, and allowed us to better understand the influence of the Sun on the Earth’s upper atmosphere,” he added.
The following are five research projects on total solar eclipses that NASA will carry out next year.
‘Chasing’ the Eclipse
Using NASA’s WB-57 high altitude research aircraft, one of the research projects will ‘chase’ the eclipse and capture images from a height of 15,240 meters above the Earth’s surface.
By taking these images above most of Earth’s atmosphere, the team hopes to see new details of the structure in the middle and bottom of the corona. These observations can help study the dust rings around the Sun and search for asteroids that may orbit near the Sun.
Corona Observation
NASA’s WB-57 will also fly cameras and spectrometers (which study the composition of light to learn more about the temperature and chemical composition of the corona and coronal mass ejections (CME) or large bursts of material from the Sun.
By flying along the eclipse path, they also hope to extend the time in the Moon’s shadow to more than two minutes. The team hopes these observations will provide new insights into the structure in the corona and the source of the constant flow of particles emitted by the Sun, namely the solar wind.
Amateur Radio Communications Experiments
In the upper regions of our atmosphere, energy from the Sun strips electrons from atoms, making these regions electrically charged, or ionized.
This region, the ionosphere, can help radio communications travel long distances, as is the case for amateur radio operators around the world. However, when the Moon blocks the Sun during a solar eclipse, the ionosphere can change dramatically, affecting these communications.
During the 2024 total solar eclipse and this year’s October annular solar eclipse, Nathaniel Frissell of Scranton University invited amateur radio operators to participate in a ‘Solar Eclipse QSO’, when they would try to make as many radio contacts in the language of amateur radio operators as they could with other operators in different locations.
Radio operators will note how strong their signal is and how far they observe how the ionosphere changes during the eclipse. Similar experiments in the past have shown that changes in the electron content of the ionosphere due to solar eclipses have a significant impact on the passage of radio waves.
Effect of Solar Radiation on the Atmosphere
The darkest part of this eclipse’s shadow crosses several locations equipped with SuperDARN radar. The Super Dual Auroral Radar Network monitors space weather conditions in the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere, so the eclipse offers a unique opportunity to study the impact of solar radiation on the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere during an eclipse.
A project led by Bharat Kunduri, of Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, will use three SuperDARN radars to study the ionosphere during the eclipse. Kunduri’s team will compare these measurements with predictions from computer models to answer questions about how the ionosphere reacts to a solar eclipse.
Observing the Sun’s Magnetism
During the upcoming eclipse, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Thangasamy Velusamy, educators at the Lewis Center for Education Research in Southern California, USA, and participants in the Solar Patrol citizen science program will observe the Sun’s ‘active regions’. These are complex magnetic regions that form above the Earth’s surface.
The Moon’s gradual path across the Sun blocks different parts of the active region at different times, allowing scientists to distinguish light signals coming from one part from another.
The team will use the 34-meter Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) to measure subtle changes in radio emissions from active regions during the 2023 annular eclipse and the 2024 total eclipse. This technique was first used during the May 2012 lunar annular eclipse.
Watch the video “The First Portrait Captured by China’s Solar Exploration Satellite”
(rns/jsn)
2023-09-10 02:04:04
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