On Monday, April 8, the inhabitants of North America will have the opportunity to watch a complete solar eclipse, while the evening will come in the Eastern Hemisphere. This natural phenomenon will be visible in Mexico, US and Canada.
The partial eclipse of the solar disk will be an observant phenomenon in most of North America, in the northwest of Europe, some of the islands of Oceania, as well as in the north of the South American continent.
Ukrainians will not be able to watch the eclipse directly, but they can view it through a direct broadcast on NASA YouTube channel. The BBC will also be broadcast.
The maximum peak of eclipse will take place at 21:17 Kiev time (18:17 GMT) and will last 4 minutes.
For researchers, for four minutes, when the shadow from the moon will darken the sun, they will sometimes become for a variety of scientific experiments.
Scientists will launch rockets along the shadow trajectory, watch animals in zoos, send radios around the world and direct cameras and telescopes into the sky, using temporary darkness. Astrophysicist from the University of Arizona, Erica Hemden, shared with the Air Force, what exactly is the peculiarity of this eclipse.
"It's really exciting," the scientist said. "If you are lucky to be in the right place, you will be able to see how the moon will completely cover the sun."
This, she said, will be an incredible visual effect that cannot be confused with another.
"Everything will become very dark, the animals will die because they think that the evening is coming," Hemden said. "The sun will seem lowering in all directions of the horizon. Stars will appear immediately after it. You can also see the solar crown - the outer shell of the atmosphere of the sun."
"It will look like petals that are removed from it. It is a really exciting phenomenon," the scientist added.
According to Hemden, full solar eclipses are quite rare. She noted that three or four were expected in this decade.
Some of them will pass through the ocean or through the pole, and no one will see them.
But the current eclipse is quite unique because it will cover all of North America, passing through a very densely populated area.
The complete solar eclipse occurs when the sun, earth and moon are located in one line and the moon completely covers sunlight.
This phenomenon occurs about once every few years, when the moon is exactly between the Earth and the Sun, but this is observed only in certain areas on the earth's surface.
During the eclipse, the moon designs a shadow in the form of a cone, the top of which can be on the surface of the earth. In this case, the shadow cone describes our planet with a certain curve, which is called a strip of complete phase. People in places covered with this strip will observe complete eclipse.
Only those who find themselves in the area called "through totality" - is a strip on the surface of the earth, where the moon will completely cover the solar disk completely.
In 2024, the "path of totality" will run through North America: from Mexico through Texas, the northern border of the New York state and to the New England region in the United States.
The next complete solar eclipse will take place in August 2026. So if you miss this, you will have to travel to Spain. During the peak, the solar crown will be visible - in fact, the atmosphere of our luminary, which scientists have been trying to study for centuries.
This mysterious part of the sun consists of a magnetized plasma and has a temperature of more than a million degrees Celsius.
Usually, because of the huge brightness of the crown, it is impossible to see the crown, but on Monday, scientists from Dallas will have the opportunity to send devices on it and take pictures.
Researchers at the University of Aberistswig in Wales and NASA's American Space Agency hope to get an idea of the solar wind - the plasma released from the surface of the sun.
Another mystery is why the crown seems much hotter than the surface of the sun, although it is located on the periphery of the light.
They may even be able to fix the so -called coronal release of mass, when huge clouds of plasma are thrown out of the solar atmosphere into the space. These emissions can affect the work of artificial satellites of the Earth.
