Eclipses are beautiful, but scientists don’t just research them to treat their eyes; eclipses have helped scientists examine the Sun’s structure and history, prove the theory of general relativity, discover a chemical element inside the Sun called helium, and much more. By studying eclipses, scientists are now able to predict the Sun’s future structure and how this will impact the Earth. Specifically, inspecting the total eclipse provides scientists a glimpse of the Sun’s atmosphere (the corona)— vital information to understand concepts like solar wind (the stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun).
The eclipse that took place on April 8th, 2024 provided similarly vital information for scientists’ understanding of the cosmos.
Sunspots, which were discovered more than 400 years ago by Galileo, are related to flares from the Sun that can damage satellites and other equipment through a phenomenon called space weather. Space weather is much more difficult to predict than weather on the Earth. In order to understand sunspots (and consequently predict space weather), scientists first must understand the Sun’s magnetic fields. The eclipse was able to clarify and potentially confirm the radio waves that space researchers have been monitoring, allowing them to determine the strength of the magnetic fields causing those radio waves.
In the recent decades, the exact size of the moon has been measured after much trial and error. However, the size of the Sun is still a point of argument with varying estimations. By predicting where the light from the sun should peak through valleys and mountains on the moon (which have been accurately located), scientists have used the recent eclipse to pin down the size of the Sun with unsurpassable precision, making measurements that were once impossible.
One top of the size of the sun, scientists also used this eclipse to determine the exact shape of the Sun. Contrary to common belief, the Sun is not a perfect sphere. Knowing the exact shape of the Sun could be vital for testing theories of gravity. By examining pictures of the eclipse at its different locations and positions along its path, scientists hope to determine the exact shape of the Sun.
