When Astronomers Chased a Total Eclipse in a Concorde

That's a great story...here is for the upcoming, I imagine there will be many satellite imagery captures also...

"For most viewers, the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse will last less than two and half minutes. But for one team of NASA-funded scientists, the eclipse will last over seven minutes. Their secret? Following the shadow of the Moon in two retrofitted WB-57F jet planes. Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and his team will use two of NASA's WB-57F research jets to chase the darkness across America on Aug. 21. Taking observations from twin telescopes mounted on the noses of the planes, Caspi will capture the clearest images of the Sun's outer atmosphere -- the corona -- to date and the first-ever thermal images of Mercury, revealing how temperature varies across the planet's surface.


With the upcoming eclipse thought this would be interesting.[/QUOTE]

 

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Scientists To Chase Solar Eclipse Using NASA Jets

 

Get the right airplane and you can keep up with the eclipse for quite a while. At the equator Earth rotates at 900 knots and it gets lower the higher (or lower) you get in latitude until it is zero at the poles. Of course, the angle between the sun and moon is also changing, so you cannot do it forever.

 

I find it remarkable that those two B-57s are still flying. Of course, they bear scant resemblance to the Canberra that started the lineage!

 

When I was stationed at Moffett Field for a few years and NASA Ames sharing space they always had cool old planes/concepts that had been re purposed for something else either flying or test stands..

 

cool story