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Scientists Share Early Results from NASA’s Solar Eclipse Experiments 


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Scientists Share Early Results from NASA’s Solar Eclipse Experiments 

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On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the North American continent from Mexico’s Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada. This photo was taken from Dallas, Texas.
Credits:
NASA/Keegan Barber

On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse swept across North America, from the western shores of Mexico, through the United States, and into northeastern Canada. For the eclipse, NASA helped fund numerous research projects and called upon citizen scientists in support of NASA’s goal to understand how our home planet is affected by the Sun – including, for example, how our star interacts with Earth’s atmosphere and affects radio communications.  

At a press briefing on Tuesday, Dec. 10, scientists attending the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C., reported some early results from a few of these eclipse experiments. 

“Scientists and tens of thousands of volunteer observers were stationed throughout the Moon’s shadow,” said Kelly Korreck, eclipse program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Their efforts were a crucial part of the Heliophysics Big Year – helping us to learn more about the Sun and how it affects Earth’s atmosphere when our star’s light temporarily disappears from view.”

Changes in the Corona

On April 8, the Citizen CATE 2024 (Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse) project stationed 35 observing teams from local communities from Texas to Maine to capture images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, during totality. Their goal is to see how the corona changed as totality swept across the continent.

On Dec. 10, Sarah Kovac, the CATE project manager at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, reported that, while a few teams were stymied by clouds, most observed totality successfully — collecting over 47,000 images in all. 

These images were taken in polarized light, or light oriented in different directions, to help scientists better understand the processes that shape the corona.

This preliminary movie from the Citizen CATE 2024 project stitches together polarized images of the solar corona taken from different sites during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.
SwRI/Citizen CATE 2024/Dan Seaton/Derek Lamb

Kovac shared the first cut of a movie created from these images. The project is still stitching together all the images into the final, hour-long movie, for release at a later time. 

“The beauty of CATE 2024 is that we blend cutting-edge professional science with community participants from all walks of life,” Kovac said. “The dedication of every participant made this project possible.” 

Meanwhile, 50,000 feet above the ground, two NASA WB-57 aircraft chased the eclipse shadow as it raced across the continent, observing above the clouds and extending their time in totality to approximately 6 minutes and 20 seconds. 

On board were cameras and spectrometers (instruments that analyze different wavelengths of light) built by multiple research teams to study the corona. 

An image of a total solar eclipse shows the Sun's corona, or outer atmosphere as white, wispy tendrils surrounding the Moon's black disk.
This image of the total solar eclipse is a combination of 30 50-millisecond exposures taken with a camera mounted on one of NASA’s WB-57 aircraft on April 8, 2024. It was captured in a wavelength of light emitted by ionized iron atoms called Fe XIV. This emission highlights electrified gas, called plasma, at a specific temperature (around 3.2 million degrees Fahrenheit) that often reveals arch-like structures in the corona.
B. Justen, O. Mayer, M. Justen, S. Habbal, and M. Druckmuller

On Dec. 10, Shadia Habbal of the University of Hawaii, who led one of the teams, reported that their instruments collected valuable data, despite one challenge. Cameras they had mounted on the aircraft’s wings experienced unexpected vibrations, which caused some of the images to be slightly blurred.

However, all the cameras captured detailed images of the corona, and the spectrometers, which were located in the nose of the aircraft, were not affected. The results were so successful, scientists are already planning to fly similar experiments on the aircraft again.

“The WB-57 is a remarkable platform for eclipse observations that we will try to capitalize on for future eclipses,” Habbal said. 

Affecting the Atmosphere

On April 8, amateur or “ham” radio operators sent and received signals to one another before, during, and after the eclipse as part of the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science. More than 6,350 amateur radio operators generated over 52 million data points to observe how the sudden loss of sunlight during totality affects their radio signals and the ionosphere, an electrified region of Earth’s upper atmosphere. 

Several young people wearing yellow safety vests look upward. The lighting appears dusky, as it does during a total solar eclipse. One person is sitting at a table with radio equipment and a laptop with headphones on and a microphone in hand, while another person in the foreground looks up with a surprised but joyful expression.
Students from Case Western Reserve University operate radios during the 2024 total solar eclipse.
HamSCI/Case Western Reserve University

Radio communications inside and outside the path of totality improved at some frequencies (from 1-7 MHz), showing there was a reduction in ionospheric absorption. At higher frequencies (10 MHz and above), communications worsened. 

Results using another technique, which bounced high-frequency radio waves (3-30 MHz) off the ionosphere, suggests that the ionosphere ascended in altitude during the eclipse and then descended to its normal height afterward. 

“The project brings ham radio operators into the science community,” said Nathaniel Frissell, a professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania and lead of HamSCI. “Their dedication to their craft made this research possible.”  

Also looking at the atmosphere, the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project organized student groups across the U.S. to launch balloons into the shadow of the Moon as it crossed the country in April 2024 and during a solar eclipse in October 2023. Teams flew weather sensors and other instruments to study the atmospheric response to the cold, dark shadow. 

A small part of Earth appears in the lower portion of the view, with the blackness of space in the background at the top. The atmosphere appears as a thin, blue band separating Earth from space. Projected on to Earth is a dark, oval-shaped shadow cast by the Moon during a total solar eclipse.
The eclipse’s shadow was captured from a camera aboard Virginia Tech’s balloon as part of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project on April 8, 2024.
Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project/Virginia Tech

This research, conducted by over 800 students, confirmed that eclipses can generate ripples in Earth’s atmosphere called atmospheric gravity waves. Just as waves form in a lake when water is disturbed, these waves also form in the atmosphere when air is disturbed. This project, led by Angela Des Jardins of Montana State University in Bozeman, also confirmed the presence of these waves during previous solar eclipses. Scientists think the trigger for these waves is a “hiccup” in the tropopause, a layer in Earth’s atmosphere, similar to an atmospheric effect that is observed during sunset. 

“Half of the teams had little to no experience ballooning before the project,” said Jie Gong, a team science expert and atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But their hard work and research was vital in this finding.”

By Abbey Interrante and Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. 

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    • By NASA
      NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on September 10, 2021, the 198th Martian day, or sol of its mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA will host a media teleconference at 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 10, to discuss the analysis of a rock sampled by the agency’s Perseverance Mars rover last year, which is the subject of a forthcoming science paper.
      The sample, called “Sapphire Canyon,” was collected in July 2024 from a set of rocky outcrops on the edges of Neretva Vallis, a river valley carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater long ago.
      Audio and visuals of the call will stream on the agency’s website at:
      https://www.nasa.gov/live
      Participants in the teleconference include:
      Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington Lindsay Hays, Senior Scientist for Mars Exploration, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance Project Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California Joel Hurowitz, planetary scientist, Stony Brook University, New York To ask questions by phone, members of the media must RSVP no later than two hours before the start of the event to: rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.
      Since landing in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater in February 2021, Perseverance has collected 30 samples. The rover still has six empty sample tubes to fill, and it continues to collect detailed information about geologic targets that it hasn’t sampled by using its abrasion tool. Among the rover’s science instruments is a weather station that provides environmental information for future human missions, as well as swatches of spacesuit material so that NASA can study how it fares on Mars.
      Managed for NASA by Caltech, JPL built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.
      To learn more about Perseverance visit:
      https://www.nasa.gov/perseverance
      -end-
      Bethany Stevens / Karen Fox
      Headquarters, Washington
      202-358-1600
      bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / karen.c.fox@nasa.gov
      DC Agle
      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
      818-393-9011
      agle@jpl.nasa.gov
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      Last Updated Sep 08, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
      Perseverance (Rover) Mars Mars 2020 Planetary Science Division Science Mission Directorate View the full article
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