Terrestrial atmospheric responses on Svalbard to the 20 March 2015 Arctic total solar eclipse under extreme conditions.

This article reports on the near-surface atmospheric response at the High Arctic site of Svalbard, latitude 78° N, as a result of abrupt changes in solar insolation during the 20 March 2015 equinox total solar eclipse and notifies the atmospheric science community of the availability of a rare dataset. Svalbard was central in the path of totality, and had completely clear skies. Measurements of shaded air temperature and atmospheric pressure show only weak, if any, responses to the reduced insolation.

Size and albedo of Kuiper belt object 55636 from a stellar occultation.

The Kuiper belt is a collection of small bodies (Kuiper belt objects, KBOs) that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune and which are believed to have formed contemporaneously with the planets. Their small size and great distance make them difficult to study. KBO 55636 (2002 TX(300)) is a member of the water-ice-rich Haumea KBO collisional family.

Solar eclipses as an astrophysical laboratory.

Observations of the Sun during total eclipses have led to major discoveries, such as the existence of helium (from its spectrum), the high temperature of the corona (though the reason for the high temperature remains controversial), and the role of magnetic fields in injecting energy into-and trapping ionized gases within-stellar atmospheres. A new generation of ground-based eclipse observations reaches spatial, temporal and spectral-resolution domains that are inaccessible from space and therefore complement satellite studies.

Observing the solar corona with a tunable Fabry-Perot filter.

A solid Fabry-Perot etalon with a 0.16 A passband was used during the 180 s solar eclipse of 2006 for rapid scans of an emission line of the solar corona. The etalon was a Y-cut lithium niobate wafer coated with reflective and conductive (ITO) layers.

Charon's radius and atmospheric constraints from observations of a stellar occultation.

The physical characteristics of Pluto and its moon, Charon, provide insight into the evolution of the outer Solar System. Although previous measurements have constrained the masses of these bodies, their radii and densities have remained uncertain. The observation of a stellar occultation by Charon in 1980 established a lower limit on its radius of 600 km (ref.

The recent expansion of Pluto's atmosphere.

Stellar occultations--the passing of a relatively nearby body in front of a background star--can be used to probe the atmosphere of the closer body with a spatial resolution of a few kilometres (ref. 1). Such observations can yield the scale height, temperature profile, and other information about the structure of the occulting atmosphere.

Deuterium in the Galactic Centre as a result of recent infall of low-metallicity gas.

The Galactic Centre is the most active and heavily processed region of the Milky Way, so it can be used as a stringent test for the abundance of deuterium (a sensitive indicator of conditions in the first 1,000 seconds in the life of the Universe). As deuterium is destroyed in stellar interiors, chemical evolution models predict that its Galactic Centre abundance relative to hydrogen is D/H = 5 x 10(-12), unless there is a continuous source of deuterium from relatively primordial (low-metallicity) gas. Here we report the detection of deuterium (in the molecule DCN) in a molecular cloud only 10 parsecs from the Galactic Centre.

Silicon vidicon spectrometry and its infrared capabilities for solar research.

A rapid-scanning silicon vidicon spectrometer is described; its sensitivity extends from 300 nm to 1080 nm, where even at that wavelength it has enough sensitivity to allow observation under eclipse conditions of a pair of forbidden spectral lines from twelve-times ionized iron that are sensitive indicators of the electron density in the solar corona. Past observational work on these ir lines is reviewed, and our vidicon observations made during the 1973 total solar eclipse are discussed. The vidicon target, the scanning procedure, and the advantages of the spectrometer are described.

Eclipse instrumentation for the solar corona.

The expedition of the Harvard College Observatory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and the National Geographic Society to Miahuatlán, Mexico, to observe the total solar eclipse of 7 March 1970, is described. Instrumentation included a coronal spectrograph, television cameras recording on videotape, telescopes for photography of coronal polarization, and cameras for direct photography. Photographs and preliminary microphotometer tracings are included.