Totality and the April 8th total solar eclipse offers a rare chance to study the Sun.
crosses North America. And while over 31 million residents live in the path of totality, many more will make the journey to briefly stand in the shadow of the Moon. Several scientific projects are also underway to take advantage of the event.
1. The Solar Patrol sunspot campaign: This effort is led by Thangasamy Velusamy out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This initiative seeks to monitor subtle changes in the magnetic fields of active sunspot regions as the Moon passes over them. The team will use the 34-meterbased in California to carry out this experiment. We’re headed towards the peak of Solar Cycle 25 over the coming year, so the odds are pretty good that the Sun will be dappled with multiple sunspots, come eclipse day.
3. Pro/AM ‘Listening Party’ to observe QSOs: Ham radio operators are familiar with the enhanced nighttime reflectivity of the upper ionosphere. This effect allows for reception of distant stations that are otherwise silent in the daytime. This sort of contact is known as a ‘QSO’ in ham radio-speak, and it also occurs during an eclipse, as totality briefly mimics the approach of night. Nathaniel Frissell of the University of Scranton is leading an effort to make QSO contacts on April 8.
The flight will also continue the campaign to scan the sky near the eclipsed Sun to hunt for elusive Vulcanoid asteroids interior to the orbit of Mercury. General Relativity did away with the need to evoke an inter-Mercurial world to explain the anomalous precession of Mercury’s orbit. The jury is still out, however, on whether smaller asteroids could still exist near the Sun. MESSENGER scoured the region near the Sun en route to Mercury.
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