Ellington aircraft to help scientists chase eclipse
Two former weather reconnaissance planes at Ellington Airport have waited seven years to record something they've never spied before. They aim to help capture 7 ½ minutes of video as the moon creeps
Ellington aircraft to help scientists chase eclipse
Two former weather reconnaissance planes at Ellington Airport have waited seven years to record something they've never spied before. They aim to help capture 7 ½ minutes of video as the moon creeps across the face of the sun to create a total eclipse visible across a long swath of the United States.
The planes will take off from Ellington with powerful telescopes and use the rare window of darkness to make observations of the sun's corona and its nearest planetary neighbor, Mercury, that would be impossible in normal daylight. Scientists hope those observations could ultimately help shed light on a host of mysteries, including big-picture questions about the sun's inner workings and more practical applications such as predicting space weather created by the sun that can damage satellites and knock out power grids.
"I'm a little anxious... to make sure that everything goes well and that we get the data that we need," said Amir Caspi, principal investigator of the project and a senior research scientist in Southwest Research Institute's Colorado office.
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Scientists have spent about a year preparing for the eclipse mission. Using NASA's WB-57 aircraft for astronomical research, however, has been about seven years in the making. This is the first time they will be used for astronomy.
"What we're hoping for is that this not only gets us really amazing data for this particular mission," Caspi said, "but also essentially showcases the potential of this platform for future astronomical missions. So hopefully we'll be able to do this, and things like this, again many times."
The NASA planes will take off from Ellington Airport around 10 a.m. Monday and fly west of St. Louis, where they'll pick up the projected eclipse path and aim their telescopes at Mercury.
The dirt on Mercury
The brilliance of the sun makes Mercury difficult to observe during the day. And viewing along the horizon at dusk or dawn presents challenges because, compared with looking straight up into the sky, scientists have to look through more of the Earth's atmosphere. That can distort images.
Caspi said scientists don't fully know what materials make up the top few centimeters of Mercury's soil or how compact it is. A heat map comparing the portion of the planet facing the sun with the portion rotated away from the sun, which is about 1,000 degrees colder, could help determine the surface composition as different materials heat up and cool down at different speeds.
Understanding the soil could give scientists a better idea of how rocky planets like Mercury and Mars form. The mission led by San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute will use infrared telescopes in an attempt to make the first-ever thermal images of Mercury's surface, Caspi said.
"We don't exactly know what we're going to see or if we're going to be successful at it," he said, "because it's the first time that we will have tried it."
The planes will fly along the projected total eclipse path at about 450 miles per hour as they collect data on Mercury.
The umbra, or dark inner shadow of the moon where observers see the total solar eclipse, will travel from Oregon