What Will the Sun’s Corona Look Like During Totality?
The total solar eclipse is less than three weeks away, but we may already have a good indication of what the Sun’s corona will look like.
The solar disk has been occulted leaving only the corona’s magnetic structure. The visible field lines indicate the model’s prediction of how the corona will appear.
National Solar Observatory/NSF
It takes the Sun 27.2753 Earth days to rotate once, so the perspective of the Sun seen on July 25th is approximately the perspective viewers will see on Eclipse Day — August 21st.
This image (right) is a solar coronal magnetic model based on measurements from the National Solar Observatory Integrated Synoptic Program (NSO/NISP) taken one solar rotation before eclipse day. So, barring the appearance of a large active region, this is the approximate structure of the corona that eclipsophiles will see from the path of totality.
What will that look like? The solar wind flows outward from the Sun along open field lines (white lines) that don’t appear to connect back to the Sun. Closed field lines (dark grey), where the lines loop back onto the Sun, trap coronal plasma. As a result, the corona in closed structures appears brighter than the open corona.
Gordon Petrie (NSO) says, “We expect to see faint, straight structures protruding from the north and south poles of the Sun — these are the polar plumes. We will be able to see brighter bulbs of material closer to the equator — these are called helmet streamers.”
Scientists can’t observe the Sun’s magnetic field lines directly. What they can study are the super-heated gases present in the Sun’s atmosphere that spiral around those magnetic field lines, much as iron filings are used to trace the field lines around bar magnets in elementary school science experiments. Those observations then guide models of the Sun’s magnetic field.
Under normal circumstances, Earthbound viewers can’t see the Sun’s ephemeral outer atmosphere at all — the Sun’s brilliance outshines it. But as totality passes from coast to coast on August 21st, scientists will be able to observe the solar corona for 90 minutes, collectively.
An upcoming project is seeking to change the way we can look at the corona — and not just during an eclipse. Using the NSF-funded Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Maui, Hawaii, scientists would be able to consistently measure the solar corona’s magnetic fields directly. According to NSO director Valentin Pillet: “This will be revolutionary in the field of solar physics.”
Of course, we’re just eagerly waiting until the end of the current rotation of the Sun — not its revolution — for August 21st.
To view the press release, click here.
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PUBLISHED; August 04, 2017 at 08:27AM
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