Mar 12 1988
From The Space Library
NASA's C-141 Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) departed NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California, for Guam to study the Sun's atmosphere during the total solar eclipse of March 17-18. A team of seven scientists aboard KAO was to make a flight through the shadow of the Moon as it moves across the Pacific Ocean. The scientists were interested in the few seconds at the beginning and end of the solar eclipse when the Sun would be almost completely covered by the Moon and when the edge of the solar disk would begin to reappear from behind the Moon. The Kuiper would intercept the path of the eclipse about 600 miles northwest of Guam. The Kuiper, a modified Lockheed C-141 jet transport air-craft, is fitted with a 36-inch diameter telescope and flies at 41,000 to 45,000 feet. Measurements of the solar atmosphere would be made at the far-infrared wavelengths of 30, 50, 100, 200, 400, and 800 micrometers, representing the first attempt to simultaneously record these wavelengths from the Sun on such a narrowly defined spatial scale. (NASA Release 88-37; ARC Release 88-08)
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