The 2024 eclipse gave a rare view of the sun. Here’s a look at the early data

Washington, DC -Scholders threw everything they had in the sky during the solar eclipse that included most of the United States on April 8, 2024. They placed high -height aircraft, recorded volunteers to start weather balloons and bright images of the sun of the Sun of the Sun Corona, and sent radio signals bacon back and forth through the atmosphere.

The goal was to get closer to discover some of the sustainable mysteries of the sun, including though Corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun, is so much hotter than the surface (Sn: 5/1/24).

The preliminary results from this host of the scientific experiments of the solar eclipse were presented on December 10 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. As the clouds obscured part of the Eclipse path across the United States, the teams were able to collect data that would promote future investigations. Here you have a closer look at how some of those projects that looked at the moon shade went.

Using total solar eclipse to see corona

A pair of NASA WB-57 planes settled to study Corona flying inside the moon shade along the Total Eclipse Road. The spaceship carried two types of instruments: cameras to capture corona images, and spectrometers that measured different wavelengths of light and could trace different structures within the corona based on their temperatures.

While some images from the cameras mounted on the side turned out unclear due to unexpected vibrations, the team was still able to capture detailed images of Corona. The spectrometers, mounted on the nose of the aircraft, were not affected.

Meanwhile, located along the entirety from Texas to Maine, 35 observation teams captured images of the Sun from Earth as part of the Citizen Cate (Eclipse Telescopic Eclipse) project. The goal was to join a 60-minute film that includes Corona’s evolution during that time, said Sarah Kovac, project leadership and an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute at Boulder, Colo.

The elusive middle corona is the transition area between the surface of the sun and the heliosphere; Also, the origin of the outbreaks of charged particles that can be wiped on the ground, potentially disrupting energy networks and satellite and radio communications. Normally, it is too weak to see with telescopes. But the moon shade acts as a natural coronagraph, making details visible, Kovac said.

The project was hampered by cloudy weather along most of the path. Even so, the teams were able to capture over 47,000 Corona images. A preliminary film sewn together by the images collected on three different sites – in Texas, Misuri and Maine – showed how many different parts of the corona were exposed over time.

Using solar eclipse to investigate gravity waves

Elsewhere along the entirety, more than 800 students, organized in teams, began weather balloons in the sky. The hope of the nationwide eclipse balloon project was to capture evidence that an eclipse disturbs enough atmosphere to create scratches called waves of gravity (Sn: 4/8/24). Storms and air moving over the mountains are known to disturb the atmosphere enough to cause waves of gravity. And researchers suspected that an eclipse may also be a trigger, producing a sudden cooling that briefly changes the balance of the atmosphere.

A similar effect is seen in the sunset every day, said Jie Gong, an atmospheric scientist with NASA’s Goddard flight center in Greenbelt, MD, who worked on the project. The stable border layer between the lower atmospheric region of Earth, Troposphere and the other region, the stratosphere, sinks while the sun sets.

Data from a similar campaign during an October 2023 eclipse in the western United States showed that the eclipse had really sent clashes through the atmosphere, Gong said. The 2024 data collection was somewhat prevented by cloudy weather, although each team released with a balloon every hour for 30 hours.

But students’ surveys, after completing the project, showed at least a clear success, Gong said: Before the project, few saw themselves as capable in the stem fields. After participating in the project, almost everyone reported seeing themselves as good at the stem.

Hints what happens in ionosphere during a general solar eclipse

More than 6,350 radio operators “HAM” amateur in hundreds of stations across the United States participated in a study of the eclipse effects on the Earth’s ionosphere, the loaded layer of the atmosphere where radio signals can transmit for long distances (Sn: 8/13/17).

The event was organized by Hamsci, an initiative of civic science that joins the Ham radio community with space scientists, taking advantage of how radio signals that jump the ionosphere can provide knowledge at the height, density and structure of that atmospheric layer. And this, in turn, can help researchers better understand the connection between space and the upper atmosphere, said the founder of the group Nathaniel Frissell, a spatial physicist at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

During the eclipse, Hamsci volunteers broadcast over 52 million signals at frequencies from 1 to 30 megahertz. What they saw, Frissell said, was that while the moon shade passed, there was a dip into the density of electrons in the ionosphere. This makes the radio waves “escape in space and communications fall”. This effect imitates the abandonment of ionization that occurs every day after the day returns to night, Frissell added.

The ephemeral change of ionization due to the briefly improved eclipse sent to lower frequencies, and deteriorated radio signals sent to higher frequencies, the group found. The data also found that the ionosphere base rose to height during the eclipse, then returned to its normal height afterwards.

SUN SUBMISSION SUPPORT from space

While the total solar eclipses open the door to many people – including civic scientists – to follow data on the mysteries of the sun, they offer only a photographic look. More answers can come from new space -based ways to study the sun’s atmosphere.

NASA’s solar parker probe has plunged into the atmosphere of the Sun, seeking the source of solar winds (Sn: 6/7/23). The spaceship will make its approach closer to the Sun still on December 24, when it flies within 6.1 million kilometers of the surface.

Meanwhile, the European Agency’s Proba-3 mission of the European Agency aims to use a pair of spacecraft flying in training to simulate hundreds of solar eclipses to better study the Middle Corona (Sn: 12/5/24).