A Total Solar Eclipse Revealed Solar Storms 100 Years Before Satellites

A Total Solar Eclipse Revealed Solar Storms 100 Years Before Satellites
NASA ID: GSFC_20170817_m12693_FirstCMEDuringEclipse
Eclipses set the stage for historic science. NASA is taking advantage of the Aug. 21, 2017 eclipse by funding 11 ground-based scientific studies. As our scientists prepare their experiments for next week, we're looking back to an historic 1860 total solar eclipse, which many think gave humanity our first glimpse of solar storms — called coronal mass ejections — 100 years before scientists first understood what they were.
Scientists observed these eruptions in the 1970s during the beginning of the modern satellite era, when satellites in space were able to capture thousands of images of solar activity that had never been seen before. But in hindsight, scientists realized their satellite images might not be the first record of these solar storms. Hand-drawn records of an 1860 total solar eclipse bore surprising resemblance to these groundbreaking satellite images.
Date Created:2017-08-17
Center:GSFC
Keywords: SOHO , Solar Eclipse , Solar Wind , Sun , Aurorae , Space Weather , SDO , Solar Dynamics Observatory , Eclipse , Heliophysics , Corona , Coronal Mass Ejections , Total Solar Eclipse , Skylab
Secondary Creator Credit: Joy Ng, Kathalina Tran, Aaron Lepsch, Sten Odenwald, Ryan Milligan, Joseph Davila, Karen Fox
Location:Goddard Space Flight Center
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