Report
ofScience at
Williams2005-2006
Inner and outer images from the ESA/NASA SOHO spacecraft
frame an eclipse image taken from Kastellorizo, Greece, by the Williams College
2006 Eclipse Expedition.
Cover:
Though the European Space Agency and NASA's Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory (SOHO) can observe the solar corona on the face of the Sun and can
observe the outer part of the solar corona, the "doughnut" between those images
is not visible from Earth except during total solar eclipses. Filling this
doughnut hole allows coronal streamers to be traced from their roots on the
sun's surface through the eclipse corona and into the solar wind, the expanding
outer corona. The central image from SOHO shows the Sun's disk at temperatures
around 60,000 to 80,000 K through a filter showing helium gas. The outer image
from SOHO shows gas at the millions of degrees typical of the sun's corona, with
the Large Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraph (LASCO) hiding the bright, inner
corona. Merging the eclipse image with the space images from SOHO allows
astronomers to trace features in the corona from their bases on the Sun's
surface up until the gas escapes into interplanetary space. Some of this gas
winds up hitting our Earth's upper atmosphere.
Credits: Williams College 2006 Eclipse Expedition (Jay Pasachoff, Bryce
Babcock, Steven Souza, Jesse Levitt, Megan Bruck, Shelby Kimmel, Paul Hess, Anna
Tsykalova, Amy Steele), partly supported by grant ATM-0552116 from the Solar
Terrestrial Research Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation's Division
of Atmospheric Sciences, with electronic cameras provided by NASA Planetary
Astronomy and additional support from the Committee for Research and Exploration
of the National Geographic Society.
The Science Executive Committee wishes to express its gratitude to the
extensive efforts of all the science departmental executive assistants in
preparing contributions for this publication, and to Kate Fletcher,
administrative assistant at the Science Center, for assembling this material in
its final form.
Editor: Dr. Bryce Babcock
This document is printed on recycled paper.
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