Collecting data unique to a solar eclipse

2017 eclipse path over US [credit: NASA — click on image to enlarge]

Time to go fishing for insights into eclipse phenomena, thanks to a loan of specialized US Navy comms equipment.

On Monday, just as CU Denver began the new academic year, an awe-inspiring solar eclipse captivated people across North America, reports Phys.org.

A thin line of total solar coverage spanned, at various intervals, the continental United States, completely blocking out the sun from Lincoln Beach, Ore., to Charleston, S.C., for a few remarkable minutes.

Mark Golkowski, PhD, acting chair and associate professor of Electrical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU Denver, and several students collected data during this rare celestial event by using state-of-the-art Naval submarine communication technology.

The Study

Traveling to remote areas of Colorado, Nebraska and North Dakota, Golkowski’s small team of students collected data on how differing amounts of sunlight affect the upper atmosphere. The team was enthused about going into the field and collecting data unique to the total solar eclipse.

“We were way out there! We’re still waiting for all the data to come back to Denver, and we’re excited about our potential findings,” said Jamie Bittle, a graduate student in Electrical Engineering at CU Denver.

In fact, they had never been able to conduct this type of experiment because it required a solar eclipse to occur with precise geometry between the U.S. Navy very-low-frequency (VLF) transmitter, the eclipse itself and the receivers.

The Naval VLF transmitter is permanently set up outside of LaMoure, N.D. It is normally used as a communication device with the U.S. submarine fleet, and is also used to sense changes in the upper atmosphere, also known as the ionosphere.

Continued here.