The international Solar Wind Sherpas team gathered at an altitude of 1,600 meters (about 5,250 feet) on Mount Pico Trigaza in northern Spain to observe the total solar eclipse on August 12. Led by Miloslav Druckmüller of the Brno University of Technology and Shadia Habbal from the University of Hawaii, the researchers aimed to study the sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona, during the 107 seconds when the moon completely obscured the solar disk. Direct observation of the inner corona is essential for understanding the origins of its extreme temperatures.
To map the heat distribution within the corona, the team utilized a custom optical system consisting of eight astrocameras. These instruments were equipped with spectral filters featuring a very narrow one-nanometer bandwidth to capture specific light wavelengths emitted by iron ions. According to the source, because the corona reaches temperatures of about a million degrees Celsius, iron atoms lose electrons and become ionized, with different temperature thresholds producing distinct ionic species.
Processing the collected data involves a highly demanding numerical procedure. Hundreds of frames taken during the eclipse, with exposure times ranging from 0.001 second to two seconds, must be calibrated against thousands of reference images to eliminate noise and optical imperfections. Druckmüller notes that generating a single final photograph requires more than two days of computer processing, with initial visible-light images expected in about two weeks and deeper insights from the iron ion data projected to take months.