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How Astronomers Used the First Concorde Prototype To Chase a Total Eclipse (vice.com)

Posted by timothy on from the chance-of-a-lifetime dept.

tedlistens writes: On Wednesday, a solar eclipse gave people across a swath of Indonesia and the South Pacific the chance to see a generous 4 minutes and 9 seconds of totality: the awe-inspiring sight of the moon completely covering the sun, turning day into night and offering a rare glimpse of the corona, the gas swirling in the Sun's outer atmosphere. But in 1972, a small group of astronomers from around the globe sought a way for seeing a longer eclipse than ever before: a prototype Concorde, capable of chasing the eclipse for a whopping 74 minutes across the Sahara Desert, at twice the speed of sound.

3 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. SOFIA by chrisaj5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A much more modern version of this is NASA's SOFIA aircraft. It observes in infrared with a large telescope. I worked on SOFIA, but had never heard of this! Incredible... even though the results were meh, that ride must have been amazing. I hope the visual portholes were good!

    1. Re:SOFIA by Strider- · · Score: 4, Interesting

      SOFIA is a magnificent instrument and a crazy aircraft with fantastic capabilities, but the 747 it's based in can't keep up with an eclipse. The thing that has always impressed me with SOFIA is how they manage to open a door that large, at speed, without the aerodynamic forces ripping the aircraft apart. The Engineers who built that have some serious chops.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    2. Re:SOFIA by Alioth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A Boeing 747 held together when this happened:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      A Boeing 737 held together when this happened:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      The engineering in an airliner is magnificent.

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows