The Solar Eclipse of 21st August 2017

On August the 21st, a solar eclipse will occur with important features, such as its duration and its visibility over populated parts of the USA. An (solar) eclipse happens when an opaque object like our Moon interferes with the light emitted by a luminous object, which in our case is the Sun. For reasons of astronomical coincidences, the Moon in our sky has approximately the same apparent size, although for this Eclipse, the Moon is a little closer to the Earth so that we end up with a larger apparent size, such that it is possible for the Moon to cover completely the sunlight during roughly 2 minutes.

This is an exceptional opportunity for scientists considering that the eclipse can be observed over a long stretch of populated area throughout large stretches of the USA. Thus the total time of possible observations of the eclipse is extended over a period of about 90 minutes from the created and projected shadow of the moon touching the first time the west coast until it finally leaves the east coast. This time window is an opportunity to obtain observations and measurements with an accuracy never reached before, due to the great technological and theoretical advances that have occured in science, technology, and especially in the field of solar physics in the recent years. For several years, solar eclipses have been used to study the outer solar atmosphere, as a solar eclipse offers during its evolution, the chromosphere to become visible (also named color sphere due to the reddish color that it shows during short times when the eclipse reaches its totality; see image 1 ) and the solar corona (which looks like a large pearly crown that surrounds the Sun, see image 2).
Figure 1. A solar eclipse over the Marshall Islands in July 2009. 
Photo: Miloslav Druckmuller / SWNS. 
(Taken from The Telegraph)
Figure 2. Impressive chromosphere observed during the total eclipse of 1999. 
Photo: Luc Viatour.
(Taken from KIS WebPage)


NASA is supporting more than 10 scientific and outreach projects on the whole covered shadow path across the United States of America (U. S. A.), where most of the scientific studies are focused on analyzing the solar corona. Among the studies that are intended to be performed are interferometric, spectroscopic ones, which are ultimately dedicated to analyse the magnetic fields of the lower corona. These observations will be carried out from ground as well as co-temporal from space with observations taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) telescope and the NASA/JAXA Hinode telescope.

On the other hand NASA has created the MEGAMOVIE project which is inviting citizens to participate in a careful and responsible way of taking photographs and videos of the solar eclipse, then upload them to the platform that NASA has created for this purpose. The project is available to the public in the MEGAMOVIE WEBPAGE. With the help of the people of the U. S. A. and other countries it will be able to create a mega film of the solar eclipse.

For further information see also:

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