A rare opportunity to study the Sun’s corona – that’s how yesterday’s total eclipse across 14 states of the US going from coast to coast, Oregon to South Carolina in a belt 70 miles wide, was being described on the BBC news.
What’s wrong with that statement? Well, it’s only decades out of date and it applies only to ground-based observers. NASA has sent probes out to orbits around the Sun and they can produce the equivalent of an eclipse to order. Astronomers who want to study the Sun’s corona are no longer forced to wait for something that happens for a few minutes every few years.
This means that solar eclipses seen from the Earth are just tourist attractions rather than a main source of science now. And the data gathered in space have the advantage of not being distorted by having an atmosphere in the way.
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