The eclipse offers researchers a rare vantage point. “From our unique perspective on Earth during a total solar eclipse, scientists can study the Sun’s corona in a way we can’t from anywhere else in the solar system,” said Kelly Korreck, eclipse program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The Sun impacts our daily life, satellites, and astronauts in space, and we can take advantage of this moment to advance our understanding of that influence.”<\/p>\n
NASA’s WB-57 high-altitude research aircraft will carry a suite of four cameras in its nose cone, part of an instrument developed by the Scientifically Calibrated In-Flight Imagery team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The cameras will capture at least 20 images per second of the corona in several wavelengths of visible and infrared light, recording structures, outflows, and rapid changes. Scientists hope to learn how prominences form, how the corona heats to nearly a million degrees, and how coronal material relates to the solar wind.<\/p>\n
Flying at 50,000 feet and 460 miles per hour along the eclipse path, the jet will observe the corona for nearly three minutes, compared to a maximum of two minutes and 18 seconds from the ground. The altitude places the cameras above clouds and allows observation of infrared wavelengths absorbed by the lower atmosphere. The instrument, called the SCIFLI Multispectral Airborne Imager, or SAMI, flew on a WB-57 during the April 8, 2024, eclipse. For 2026, the team will adjust exposure times to better capture bright features overexposed in 2024 and use new software to process data sooner. The experiment is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Low Cost Access to Space Program.<\/p>\n
“The Sun is always changing,” said principal investigator Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “Every eclipse is different. So we could see things we didn’t see before. And we learn from each eclipse how to better observe the next one.”<\/p>\n
The Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, led by Angela Des Jardins at Montana State University, is sending students from several U.S. universities to Iceland and Spain. In Iceland, two teams will launch 80 balloons from 18 hours before the eclipse until eight hours afterward to study Earth’s boundary layer. Previous flights in October 2023 and April 2024 showed the boundary layer collapsed under clear skies but not cloudy ones. “Will this eclipse be able to collapse the boundary layer?” said Matthew Bernards, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Idaho, who leads one of the Iceland teams. In Spain, three teams will launch six balloons carrying 360-degree cameras and ozone-measuring instruments.<\/p>\n
The campaign advances the corona research agenda by capturing the Sun’s outer atmosphere in conditions no satellite can fully replicate, and by testing whether atmospheric changes seen in earlier eclipses recur under Iceland’s long summer days and a later time of day.<\/p>\n
The eclipse will not be visible from the United States, though some regions will see a partial solar eclipse. NASA has published guidance on where to see the event and how to view it safely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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