‘You’re hit with a slam of shadow’: Nasa’s air mission to capture rare eclipse data — SkimNews
SkimNews Take
Eclipses remain one of the few astronomical events scientists cannot artificially reproduce, so chasing totality by jet is a workaround for a fleeting window — the brief natural occultation still enables corona observations that space coronagraphs struggle to match.
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- NASA's WB-57 aircraft departed Keflavik, Iceland to fly at 50,000ft along the eclipse path at 460mph, extending totality from a ground-level 2 min 18 sec to nearly 3 minutes for passengers beneath the shadow
- Dr. Amir Caspi's team fitted the WB-57 with four cameras in the nose cone capturing dozens of images per second across different wavelengths, generating terabytes of data on prominences and magnetic nanoflares
- Nanoflares, despite their diminutive name, each release thousands of atomic bombs' worth of energy and may explain why the sun's corona exceeds 1,000,000C while its surface sits at just 6,000C
- NASA sensor operator Cary Klemm described the eclipse experience at altitude as a sudden "slam of shadow" — temperature drops, instrument lights needed, and an eerie darkness wrapping around the cockpit
- The WB-57 is based on the English Electric Canberra, the RAF's cold war tactical nuclear strike aircraft, and follows a lineage of eclipse-chasing aircraft including 1923 US Navy biplanes and a 1973 Concorde that tracked an eclipse for 74 minutes over the Sahara
- The research aims to improve space weather forecasting that protects astronauts, satellites, power grids and communications from solar storms
Why it matters: The WB-57 captures terabytes of eclipse data that ground-based cameras cannot (blocked by clouds and atmospheric interference) and space telescopes cannot (limited bandwidth), with nanoflare findings directly informing space weather forecasting that protects satellites, power grids and communications. By flying at 460mph along the eclipse path, the mission stretches totality by roughly 42 seconds — critical extra time for high-resolution solar imaging.
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