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Next month, a total solar eclipse will pass over part of the South Pacific, Chile and Argentina – and directly onto an observatory located in the Andes and managed by the National Science Foundation.
Astronomers and physicists are currently preparing the experiments they plan to perform during the eclipse. As in the case of past eclipses, these experiments will focus on the observation of the sun as well as the effects of eclipses on the Earth.
"We are trying to understand how the sun shines," Jay Pasachoff, a professor of astronomy at Williams College, told Gizmodo.
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Telescopes currently on the Cerro Tololo site are not equipped to observe the Sun, but researchers can take advantage of the Andean atmosphere and the infrastructure of the National Science Foundation to install new telescopes at the top of the mountain . The NSF National Solar Observatory has selected five teams to use the site during the eclipse. Researchers will mainly study the furthest and furthest region of the Sun's atmosphere, its crown, while a team will study changes in the Earth's atmosphere.
Eclipses are useful tools for solar physicists. Normally, the solar photosphere producing light far surpasses the crown. The imaging of the crown requires either specially designed experiments with coronographs blocking the photosphere … or the Moon passing directly in front of the Sun.
There are many reasons why the crown is interesting. First, quite simply, there are many things that scientists do not understand about it. We know that the Sun has eleven-year cycles of activity, but there is no good way to predict the explosions of solar activity such as solar flares. These particle explosions can potentially damage power grids and even voting machines or GPS satellites. Pasachoff's team will imagine and measure the different wavelengths of the light emitted by the Sun, in the hope of validating predictions about the shape the crown should have.
They will also fly an aircraft through the shadow projected by the eclipse to make measurements, observing the evolution of the crown over time, said Pasachoff. A Japanese team led by Yoichiro Hanaoka at the Observatory of Solar Science of the National Observatory of Astronomy will also measure the evolution of the crown over time, with the help of scientific citizens who will observe the eclipse along of his South American journey.
Presumably, other stars have crowns with cyclic behavior as well, and the Sun allows us to study the behavior of a star closely, Pasachoff said.
The study of the magnetic field could also help us better understand solar discharges, explained Paul Bryans, a researcher at the University's Atmospheric Research Corporation. Researchers can measure the magnetic field by measuring the polarization or orientation of light waves relative to the direction in which they move. They are particularly interested in a wavelength of light emitted by certain silicon ions in the corona, and hope that it will be a useful solar function to study with an upcoming solar physics experiment called Daniel K. Inouye solar telescope. , or DKIST.
They are also testing a portable camera to measure the polarization of the light that could possibly be sent into space in order to be able to measure the Sun without the Earth's atmosphere blocking some of the light, said Bryans.
The eclipse is useful for other reasons. This year, the sun is almost at a minimum in activity, which means that the crown will no longer have the same face as during the 2017 eclipse, Shadia Habbal, a scientist at the University of Hawaii who will lead another project measuring the changes of the crown over time, explained in a statement from the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.
A final team, led by Dr. Serra-Ricart from the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (Spain), will examine the effects of the eclipse on the ionosphere, the outer layer of the electrically charged atmosphere. A study revealed that the 2017 eclipse seemed to leave a "wake" of waves in the upper atmosphere. Scientists will want to know more about this effect and other potential anomalies.
As in 2017, the 2019 eclipse over South America will offer many exciting opportunities for solar science. Unfortunately for those of us in the United States, it will not offer any viewing opportunities for people in North America, Europe, Asia or Africa. North Americans will have another blow in 2024.
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