Residents of San Antonio and stargazers across the nation are gearing up for a sky show slated for April 8, as a total solar eclipse is set to offer stunning views and a hotbed for scientific research. According to the San Antonio Report, the solar extravaganza will also enable Southwest Research Institute scientists to probe deep into the sun’s greatest mystery—the sizzling hot corona.
The corona, a fiery envelope around the sun, is a baffling 200 times hotter than its surface. Dr. Amir Caspi, a solar physicist at the institute and lead investigator of this celestial observation will deploy experiments aimed at understanding why. He voiced his anticipation to the San Antonio Report, "I’m just really excited about the fact that this eclipse crosses over so much populated and easy-to-access land,."
More than 100 citizen scientists across the U.S. are expecting to lay eyes on the totality—a phase when the moon completely blankets the sun, revealing the usually hidden corona. Caspi's ground project, known as Citizen CATE, has enlisted 35 teams, including nine in Texas, to capture the grand event from beginning to end, creating an approximately 60-minute montage of the eclipse. The data harvested by these crews, equipped with special telescopes, could shed light on the sun's hot outer atmosphere as reported by the San Antonio Report.
Simultaneously, Caspi’s other project takes to the skies with two NASA WB-57 jets ascending to 50,000 feet. They come fitted with cameras to snap high-altitude images of the event. "One of the long-standing questions of the solar corona is 'Why is it so hot?' It's actually millions of degrees, and the solar surface is only a few thousand degrees," Caspi told, KSAT.
