Total solar eclipse in Antarctica: when and where to see the rare astronomical event LIVE?

Antarctica will experience a solar eclipse total this December 4, a rare event that will give scientists an idea of ​​the behavior of the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Solar eclipses occur when the Luna it passes directly between the Earth and the Sun, casting its shadow on the Earth’s surface and blocking sunlight. A total eclipse occurs when the Moon completely hides the Sun from view.

Total solar eclipses do not occur often because the Moon’s path around the Earth does not exactly match the Earth’s path around the Sun. On average, most of them do occur around the Earth’s mid-latitudes: the tropical, subtropical and temperate regions. Eclipses near the poles are generally rare because the polar regions take up less space, so the Moon’s shadow falls on them less often.

Follow LIVE the solar eclipse of December 4

Because only people who live in a small and remote area of ​​the planet will be able to see the total eclipse, NASA will broadcast the rare event live:

Where will it be visible?

This eclipse It will reach its peak around 07:33 GMT (02:33, in Peru). Observers in some areas of St. Helena, Namibia, Lesotho, South Africa, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Crozet Islands, Falkland Islands, Chile, New Zealand and Australia will see a partial solar eclipse on December 4, NASA details.

There won’t be another until 2039

The total eclipse on December 4 will be only the second to pass over Antarctica this century. The last eclipse over the southernmost continent occurred in November 2003, and the next will not be until December 2039.

As reported by the NSF (National Science Foundation) of United States, researchers are taking advantage of this unusual event because it provides an opportunity to study how electricity flows through the ionosphere, a layer of Earth’s atmosphere filled with charged particles.

Electric currents constantly flow through the ionosphere, but they flow differently between the northern and southern hemispheres, and scientists aren’t sure why. When sunlight dims during an eclipse, the temperature and the flow of electricity in the ionosphere change in a fairly predictable way. The researchers plan to measure those changes during the next eclipse and hope to learn more about why there are differences in electrical currents between the two hemispheres.

“The eclipse is a natural experiment for us”, said Michael Hartinger, a geophysicist at the Space Science Institute in Los Angeles, California, whose team is studying the eclipse. “It gives us the closest we can get to controlled conditions to understand these asymmetries between north and south.”

Unusually strong electrical currents in the ionosphere, such as those that occur during a solar storm, can wreak havoc on the power grid and other technological infrastructure. Understanding the complexities of electricity in the atmosphere helps scientists better prepare for these types of electrical outages, Hartinger said.

Hartinger’s team is part of an international group of researchers, including those from the UK and Denmark, who are studying the December 4 eclipse from different perspectives. This will be your first opportunity to observe detailed changes in the ionosphere in both hemispheres during an eclipse.

Instruments available

Electricity in near-Earth space flows along Earth’s magnetic field lines, and observations are best made near the north and south magnetic poles, where the strongest currents enter and exit the ionosphere. There has been a network of ionosphere observing instruments in Greenland since the 1990s, but a complementary network in Antarctica was not completed until 2016.

Hartinger and his team will use measurements from both Greenland and the Antarctica to study atmospheric currents during the next eclipse. Antarctic instruments are on the path of the same magnetic field line as those in Greenland, so researchers will be able to study currents in detail as they travel from one pole to the other.

“We need to know what is happening at both ends of the field lines to really understand what is creating the electrical currents.”Hartinger said. “The special thing here is that we have a network of instruments in both hemispheres and there is a lot of other supporting data that we have now that we did not have in 2003.”

Hartinger and PhD student Shane Coyle have just finished servicing some of the Antarctic instruments in need of repair, so they are fully operational and ready for next Saturday’s event. Radio instruments at the three US Antarctic research stations will also make coordinated observations during the eclipse.

If conditions are right, observers in West Antarctica will get the best view of the eclipse, but anyone on the continent should see at least some dimming of sunlight. The path of totality will travel in a general arc from east to west from the Ronne Ice Shelf to the land of Marie Byrd, the Hobbs coast, and then over the Southern Ocean.

With information from Europa Press

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