While winemakers are celebrating the Chinese government's decisions to lift punishing tariffs, rock lobster producers say they aren't feeling confident about a similar move for their industry.
For scientists focused on unlocking the secrets of the sun, it’s not a newfangled invention but a cyclical celestial event — and an appetite for world travel — that offers them an unmatched opportunity to observe our nearest star.
During total solar eclipses, which are visible from a different location on Earth roughly every one to two years, the moon briefly obscures the sun’s disk (i.e. the big, round circle) and reveals its corona, or outer atmosphere that radiates beyond it like a halo.
Animation by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
The corona is a million times dimmer than the sun’s disk, which makes it impossible to see without aid. To study the corona on a normal day, researchers rely on instruments equipped with a kind of artificial moon that blocks out the sun’s face, but those tools have steep limitations.
On April 8, the moon’s shadow will fall across North America in a path of totality that starts in Mexico and ends in eastern Canada.Leading researchers in the field of solar science are poised to acquire a treasure trove of new information about the corona during the event.
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