Astronomers scrutinized last year’s eclipse. Here’s what they’ve learned
New research is providing hints about what’s going on in the sun’s atmosphere
HIDDEN DETAILS The sun’s corona is on full display in this composition of 161 photographs taken from Mitchell, Ore., during the August 21, 2017, solar eclipse. The research team behind this image used a special spectrometer to gain new insight into the corona’s motion.
© 2017 Miloslav Druckmüller, Peter Aniol and Shadia Habbal
LEESBURG, Va. — Astronomers watching the 2017 solar eclipse from the ground and from the air witnessed new, tantalizing features of the sun’s outer atmosphere.
Three teams have recently presented their first science results from the Great American Eclipse. Combined, the findings could help disentangle lingering solar puzzles, such as how bursts of plasma leave the sun, why the outer atmosphere, the solar corona, is so well organized and what is the nature of the corona’s magnetic field.
While thousands of eclipse watchers gathered across the country last August armed with special glasses and cameras, solar physicists Adalbert Ding and Shadia Habbal and their colleagues set up a specially designed spectrometer in Mitchell, Ore. (That was one of four sites from which their team monitored the eclipse.) The team had used an earlier version of the instrument, which takes in specific wavelengths of light that can trace different coronal
