At HAO, we love eclipses… a lot. Whether we’re traveling around the world to take images of a total solar eclipse, or creating an artificial eclipse using an instrument called a coronagraph, HAO researchers are always hungry for the scientific opportunity eclipses offer to learn more about the Sun’s still mysterious corona.
Within the next year, there will be two natural solar eclipses visible in the United States: An annular eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, and a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Meanwhile, we are hard at work developing a unique instrument for creating artificial eclipses that will give researchers an entirely new capability for measuring magnetic fields in the corona. The instrument called the Large Coronagraph, is part of our COronal Solar Magnetism Observatory, or COSMO.
Combined, these upcoming opportunities have us so giddy that we broke into song (literally). We invite you to watch the result! Check out this new music video by COSMOrama: “My Corona.” The video is inspired by “My Sharona” by The Knack.