A recent solar eclipse across North America provided scientists with a rare opportunity to study the Sun and its interaction with Earth. The event allowed researchers to observe the Sun’s corona, a region previously invisible due to its intense brightness.
NASA-funded researchers used high-resolution images of the corona in different wavelengths of light to gain insights into how activity on the solar surface affects the atmosphere. According to Kelly Korreck, eclipse program manager at NASA Headquarters, these findings can help improve our understanding of how the Sun’s activity propagates into the corona and eventually impacts Earth.
The study also involved a citizen-science project called Citizen CATE 2024, which deployed telescopes along a path from Texas to Maine to capture data during the eclipse. The project allowed researchers to correlate their findings with those from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, now scheduled to dive close to the Sun on Christmas Eve.
Researchers used various approaches, including high-resolution images and radio signals, to study the ionosphere and its effects on satellite communications. Jie Gong of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center noted that understanding the ionosphere is crucial for predicting weather patterns, as it plays a significant role in atmospheric waves caused by temperature changes during an eclipse.
The next step in this research is to deploy the Parker Solar Probe, which will directly observe the Sun’s inner corona regions observed during the eclipse. By doing so, researchers hope to gain a more accurate understanding of the phenomenon and refine their theories on the Sun’s interaction with Earth’s atmosphere.
Source: https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/solar-probe-nears-sun-as-agu-meeting-begins