What can the eclipse tell us about the corona’s magnetic field?
Scientists want to directly measure the forces behind the wispy dancing plasma in the sun’s atmosphere
SIGNS OF LINES The sun’s magnetic field is connected to one in the corona, which is much weaker and therefore harder to observe. Together, they form a twisted mess, illustrated here as white lines (based partly on a model) over a 2016 image of the sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL
The star of any solar eclipse is, of course, the sun.