Longest Eclipse Ever: Airplane Chases the Moon’s Shadow

[n2doc]

By Lisa Grossman July 22, 2010



Eclipse hunters set a new record on July 11 for the longest eclipse ever observed by civilians chasing the moon in an airplane. While hundreds of eclipse enthusiasts flocked to islands in the South Pacific to watch the moon blot out the sun, astronomer Glenn Schneider and colleagues climbed to 39,000 feet to spend 9 minutes, 23 seconds in the moon’s shadow.

“We cheated Mother Nature by two minutes beyond what she could normally produce,” Schneider said.

Theoretically, the longest total solar eclipse that can be viewed from the ground is 7 minutes, 32 seconds long, a limit set by the geometry of celestial mechanics. Total solar eclipses happen when the new moon passes in front of the sun, casting a round shadow on the Earth that turns day to night. During the few minutes when the moon is directly in front of the sun, called totality, viewers get a rare glimpse of the solar corona, tendrils of gas that dance around the sun’s outer atmosphere. Although a solar eclipse is visible from somewhere on Earth every 16 months or so, totality is only ever visible from a narrow swatch of the planet.

The geometry of the July 11 eclipse worked out such that, by chasing the moon’s shadow at Mach 0.8, Schneider and his colleagues could stretch totality to from about 5 minutes to nearly 9 and a half minutes.

“It’s something we’re never going to be able to do again,” Schneider said. “It was an opportunity we just couldn’t pass up.”




Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/eclipse-chasers/

[FirstLight]

1. loooove it!

thanks for sharing. I've wanted to go on the eclipse excursions before...*sigh* ...someday....