NASA Tracks Solar Eclipse With Special Jets, Search For Volcanoids

The WB-57 aircraft used in the Matahari Pursuit project. (photo: x @flightradar24 ·)

JAKARTA - As Monday's solar eclipse April 8 moved from Mexico, headed to the US above Texas, and continued towards Maine and then Canada, two NASA-specific aircraft continued to pursue it.

Four scientists aboard two of NASA's three WB-57 research aircraft flew at a speed of 460 miles per hour in the stratosphere collecting data on the solar corona - the upper atmosphere of the celestial body, which was unusually seen as a halo during Monday's event.

The WB-57, which flies at high altitudes, pursues eclipses from an altitude of 50,000 feet above sea level, records data on how the sun affects our ionosphere, how the solar atmosphere itself works, and even searches for the long-known 'vulcanoid' asteroid.

The asteroid is believed to orbit between the Sun and Mercury, but sinks from astronomical observations by persistent radiation from the sun.

The camera installed on the plane took visible and infrared light at high resolution and high speed, becoming a key instrument for the research of 'vulcanoids' asteroids during the flight, which searched for them while studying the ring of dust around the sun.

The 'chasing the Eclipse' project was led by physicist Amir Caspi, who studied the physics of the high-energy solar at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, on August 21, 2017.

The show is moving at a speed of about 1,500 mph at its lowest speed and the aircraft is only about 460 mph," Caspi told ABC television station. So the shadow will overtake them quite quickly.

NASA's plane was launched from Mexico's coast, flying northeast in an effort to anticipate an eclipse at the time towards the Texas border.

There are four total cameras in the nose of the second WB-57 plane, each adapted to capture 'color' or specific wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some parts of the electromagnetic frequency spectrum (EMF), including mid-wave infrared, cannot be measured from the ground, as they are mostly absorbed by gas and other particles in the atmosphere.

The mid-infrared corona images taken during the August 2017 eclipse have been used by NASA-affiliated researchers to measure more precisely the solar diameter, which is still unknown with certainty, as well as to try to solve the mystery of why the corona is hotter than the solar surface.

Such jet flights offer the best ever-ever observation of high-frequency phenomena in the corona, said astrophysical expert Dan Seaton, one of NASA's project investigators, in a NASA statement in 2017 ahead of the team's 'chasing the I's Eclipse' six years ago.

Monday's jet flight mission provides an opportunity for both NASA aircraft to witness a complete overlap, or eclipsing 'totality' for 25 percent longer than the longest possible ground observations to occur today, which is a 4-minute 27-second 'totality' event seen from Torrewas in Mexico.

The WB-57 team had the opportunity to see a totality eclipse for an estimated 6 minutes 22 seconds, and with a perfect view above all cloud cover.