Total Eclipse
"Solar eclipses are spectacular to watch because of the drama of the sky going dark in the daytime, the blue sky going away, the rapid changes in the sun". Eclipse Science "We are studying how the solar corona got to be 2 million degrees [Celsius], what its polarization is, and how features that form on the solar surface propagate into the corona and even out to the Earth," he said. Observations of the corona are possible from Earth only during the brief moments of a total solar eclipse. The corona is usually hidden by the blue sky as it is about a million times fainter than the photosphere, the layer of the sun seen shining every day. Solar eclipses are possible only because the sun and the moon appear to be about the same size in the sky. In reality, the sun is about 400 times bigger than the moon , but it is also about 400 times further from the Earth than the moon , according to astronomers. When the moon's elliptical orbit around the Earth takes it direct...