On August 12, a total solar eclipse darkened the skies over Greenland, Iceland and Spain. When the Moon covered the Sun, it briefly revealed the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, to those in the path of totality with clear skies. NASA researchers and photographers positioned themselves along the path of the eclipse to study the corona, capture the phenomenon and observe how the eclipse affected the planet.
A NASA photographer in Spain captured the total solar eclipse as well as the partial phases before and after, until the Sun set below the horizon. In northern Maine, where only a partial eclipse was visible, another NASA photographer captured the International Space Station, with its crew of seven members on board, passing rapidly in front of the partially eclipsed Sun.
From approximately 250 miles above the ground, a NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured several photos of the partial eclipse from his perspective. Meanwhile, NASA pilots flew the WB-57F research aircraft at an altitude of 50,000 feet, crossing the shadow of the eclipse to extend their time in the eclipse. The aircraft carried a series of cameras that captured high-resolution images of the corona and prominences, columns of electrically charged gas that rise from the Sun, at various wavelengths of light.
In Iceland and Spain, teams of students participating in the NASA-funded National Eclipse Ballooning Project launched scientific balloons carrying instruments to capture images of the eclipse shadow and study its effects on the atmosphere. Although clouds obscured the view of the eclipse from the ground in Iceland, the weather did not interfere with the ability of the balloon-borne instruments to gather information on how the brief loss of light and heat affected the lower atmosphere.
Before the eclipse, scientists from Predictive Science Inc., with support from NASA grants and supercomputers, used observations of the Sun from NASA spacecraft and ground-based telescopes to predict how the corona would appear during the eclipse. Their predictions of the corona were subsequently compared with a composite image of the corona, which combines multiple images captured by the DEB Initiative project with NASA support during the total eclipse near León, Spain.
