If you are on the path of totality for the April 8 total solar eclipse, you experience a brief period of darkness – totality – lasting a few seconds or minutes. This is the only safe time to avoid looking directly at the sun solar eclipse glasses. If you observe the sunDuring the totality of the corona you can see dark pink towers and loops of electrically charged plasma extending many times diameter of the earth go inside room. During the last total solar eclipse, in Australia on April 20, 2023, these were ‘prominences’ were spectacular – and enormous.
These prominences will almost certainly be visible during totality in North America on April 8, as the Sun is likely at the peak of its 11-year existence. solar cycleknown as solar maximum.
Prominences can be visible for days—you can look at them anytime, if you use a hydrogen-alpha telescope—but there are a few other rare phenomena you might be able to see during totality. Here you can see which solar activity you should pay attention to during the total solar eclipse.
Related: 10 things you probably didn’t know about the 2024 total solar eclipse
1. Coronal mass ejection
Coronal mass ejection
Frequency: Several times a month
Duration: A couple of hours
Appearance: Stationary, spiral structure in the Sun’s corona
Previous observations: 1860 and 2020
An example of such a phenomenon that could be visible is a coronal mass ejection (CME).
“If we’re lucky, a CME will present itself as a twisted, spiral structure, high in the atmosphere in the Sun,” Ryan Frencha solar physicist at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, and author of “The Sun: Beginner’s Guide to Our Local Star (Collins, 2023), told Space.com. A CME is a huge ejection of magnetic field and plasma mass of the Sun’s corona. It moves quickly, but appears to be stationary for a few hours.
“What this does mean, however, is that Rochester is seeing the same eruption as Dallas, at different stages of the same long-lasting eruption,” French said.
It takes 100 minutes the moon‘s shadow would cross North America, so a CME could go off just before it and be visible to all under a clear sky.
CMEs can certainly occur during totality. One of them was imaged on December 14, 2020during the “Great Patagonian Eclipse” in Chile, when the sun was close to solar minimum.
2. Solar flares
Solar flares
Frequency: Several times a month
Duration: A couple of minutes
Appearance: Red loops close to the sun’s surface
Solar flares are powerful bursts of radio waves, visible light, x-rays and gamma rays on the surface of the sun where they travel speed of light and it takes only eight minutes to reach Soil. They often take a CME.
Although three solar flares that reached the X class – the highest intensity level – went off during a week in Februaryit is highly unlikely that you will see one during totality.
“A solar flare is different from a CME: it is much lower in the solar system the atmosphere of the suncloser to the edge of the moon, and would only be visible for a few minutes,” French said. “These would resemble low-altitude prominences, visible as red loops closer to the sun’s surface.”
However, the timing and position of a solar flare and a CME should be just right. “To be visible from Earth, it must be above the edge of the Sun for the few minutes of totality — so as not to be blocked by the Moon,” French said.
3. “Giant Erupting Prominences”
“Giant Erupting Prominences”
Frequency: Several times a month
Duration: Multiple days
Appearance: Red towers and loops stretching from the sun’s surface into the corona
Previous observations: 1919 and 1946
We will see prominences during totality on April 8. “Prominences come in a wide range of sizes and are more common during solar maximum,” French said. ‘Sometimes prominences erupt, detaching from the Sun’s surface and spreading to the Sun’s surface solar system.”
That would be a spectacular sight, but what eclipse hunters really want to see are ‘giant eruptive’ prominences – preferably detached from the Sun’s surface and floating freely in the corona.
“There have been a few examples of such prominence eruptions in recent months, any of which would have put on a great show if they had occurred during a total solar eclipse,” French said. “But it’s worth noting that the eclipse will still provide a view of stationary, non-eruptive prominences; they will just be smaller and closer to the Sun’s surface than during the eruption.”
Expanding totality to see more eruptions
“The problem with eclipses is that they only last a few minutes, so you usually can’t take the measurements time,” Amir Caspi, chief scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, told Space.com. “However, the Sun is incredibly dynamic; some processes take minutes or even seconds, such as a solar flare or a CME,” Caspi said.
Since such short events are unlikely to occur during totality, there is only one solution: make totality longer. One way to expand on this is to get into a supersonic jet and chase the moon’s shadow. Scientists did this in 1973 using the Concorde and achieved a total of 73 minutes.
The alternative is to film the eclipsed sun from an entire continent for a few minutes, hoping that someone somewhere can catch the beginning or end of an event. That rarely happens, but it will happen on April 8. That day, totality arrives in the US at 1:27 PM CDT and departs Maine at 3:35 PM EDT – a total of 68 minutes.
The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE 2024) project, which Caspi leads, is an effort to create a continuous 60-minute 3D movie of the Sun’s corona in polarized light, using 35 teams of three or four citizen scientists. They will all use standardized cameras and setups and hope to get lucky with the sun.