SwRI-led eclipse projects shed new light on solar corona

The Sun’s corona, its outermost atmosphere, is typically only visible to the naked eye during a total solar eclipse. The SwRI-led Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) 2024 project evaluated special cameras to measure the polarization of coronal light during the April 2023 total solar eclipse in Exmouth, Western Australia. In this image, the colors indicate the polarization or orientation of the light. The white features, called prominences, have no polarization.

Teams led by Southwest Research Institute successfully executed two groundbreaking experiments — by land and air — collecting unique solar data from the total eclipse that cast a shadow from Texas to Maine on April 8, 2024. Read more…