NASA jet chases eclipse to study sun's corona and space weather
A NASA WB-57 jet chased the moon's shadow over Greenland, Iceland and Spain, extending totality to almost three minutes to study the sun's corona and space weather.
The Full Story
A plain summary built from the channels that reported this story.
A NASA WB-57 research jet chased the moon's shadow across Greenland, Iceland and Spain during a total solar eclipse, giving scientists a rare chance to study the sun's corona and space weather.
The aircraft flew at about 50,000 feet, or 16 kilometres, and reached speeds of 460 miles per hour, or 740 kilometres per hour. From the ground, totality lasted 2 minutes and 18 seconds. From the jet, the team extended that to almost three minutes, gaining extra observation time.
The plane carried a specialist telescope and six cameras. They took 20 to 50 images per second across visible and infrared wavelengths. The thousands of high-resolution pictures were used to build a mosaic of the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, where temperatures reach about a million degrees.
Flying above much of the atmosphere also gave the team access to wavelengths of light that cannot be seen from the ground and are not yet covered by space instruments. Scientists hope the data will help explain why the sun's outer atmosphere is far hotter than its surface. They also want to understand how space weather starts and how it affects Earth, satellites, astronauts, power stations and GPS reliability.
On the ground, a NASA-funded student project sent up 80 weather balloons from near Reykjavik, one every hour, to track atmospheric changes as the sky darkened. Each balloon carried a radiosonde to measure pressure, temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. The balloons were expected to rise to about 30 to 35 kilometres before bursting, while sending radio signals back to ground stations. Researchers were especially interested in the boundary layer, where mass, momentum and energy mix, because energy exchange changes during an eclipse.
Observers in Spain saw full totality. In Iceland, clouds blocked the view, though the sky still plunged into darkness. Some people there said they had chills even without seeing the corona. High above the clouds, the NASA crew had a prime view from the stratosphere as the eclipse got its close-up.
On screen
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Key Claims
Claims reported during this story's coverage, mapped by channel. Ordered by how many channels carried each claim.
| Claim | BBC News |
|---|---|
| A NASA WB-57 jet followed the eclipse shadow at an altitude of 50,000 feet and a speed of 740 kilometres per hour. | |
| A NASA-funded student project released 80 weather balloons at hourly intervals to study atmospheric changes during the eclipse. | |
| The NASA jet extended totality from 2 minutes 18 seconds on the ground to nearly three minutes. |
Channel Perspectives
What each channel focused on, with key quotes.
The BBC treated the eclipse as a science story first. It centred on NASA's WB-57 chase, the instrument package, the extra minutes of totality and the practical risk from space weather. It also widened the frame to a student balloon launch near Reykjavik and to spectators in Iceland and Spain, with an explanatory, wonder-struck tone.
- “Our plan is to effectively try to race the sun.”
- “To understand space weather and to be able to predict space weather, we have to be able to understand the origins of that space weather and that means studying the solar corona.”
- “It connects you to the universe and to our solar system, to our star. It makes you feel both small and special at the same time.”
Broadcast Timeline
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