August Solar Eclipse Created Atmospheric Waves

August Solar Eclipse Created Atmospheric Waves

The August solar eclipse was once in a life-time event and NASA offered a lot of information and programs for people to track it down and enjoy it. During this event, the moon’s shadow created ripples in the atmosphere of our planet of a similar shape as waves.

Scientists predicted this phenomenon decades ago

The moon’s shadow created waves which looked as a boat sailing in the ocean. The waves were created in the upper layers of Planet Earth’s atmosphere on the 21st of August 2017.

Solar eclipses take place several times every year or two somewhere on Earth, however, the one from August was the first one in a while to take place in such a populated land as the United States. The August 2017 was the first solar eclipse in a century to travel across the continental United States from coast to coast.

Perhaps the most “mediatized” total solar eclipse of all so far. Many professionals and amateurs were able to use their instruments of choice to study the August eclipse. Some of the scientists were the researchers from MIT’s Haystack Observatory and the University of Tromsø in Norway. The latter were hoping to find the bow-wave phenomenon. The phenomenon would implicate the eclipse created pockets of high-pressure air under the moon’s shadow and then till low-pressure air.

The August solar eclipse allowed researchers to collect over 2.000 satellite receivers and they managed to detect bow waves in the ionosphere of our planet.

Thanks to the technological advances, scientists were able to identify complex interconnections between the sun, moon and Planet Earth’s neutral atmosphere and ionosphere. There are many mysteries left; however, the August eclipse did not cause waves intense enough to have an effect on the electrical grid. From now own, solar eclipse will be studies with high-tech technology.

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