Air Force News Service
Released: Mar 2, 1998
Airmen in Panama support world's top eclipse research team
By Staff Sgt. John B. Dendy IV, 24th Wing Public Affairs
HOWARD AIR FORCE BASE, Panama (AFNS) -- Airmen in Panama supported the
world's principal research effort on one of the last total solar
eclipses of the 20th century Feb. 26.
A C-130 government research aircraft taxied around the airfield at
Howard Air Force Base, Panama, Feb. 18 and 19, allowing scientists
onboard to calibrate detectors aimed at the corona of the sun to find
structures never observed.
The ground maneuvers were a prelude to a Feb. 20 research flight with
the C-130's instrument suite operating in an unpressurized state at
18,000 feet. A basketball-hoop-sized porthole remains open to the sky
so that an onboard telescope can have a moisture-free view of the
target, "Old Sol."
The eclipse was best viewed where the rain forest frontiers of Panama
and Colombia join, so the location and appropriate air and space
facilities at Howard made the base home for the research team for a
few days, said the mission's principal investigator, Robert MacQueen,
of Tennessee's Rhodes College.
"It zipped across the Earth at about 1,800 miles per hour," MacQueen
said of the shadow that was produced by the eclipse. "There was a
four-hour period where we flew over the Pacific Ocean west of Panama
to have the shadow of the moon aligned with us," as the scientists
tracked the sun on eclipse day (Feb. 26)."
The C-130 helped its crew hunt for spectral lines that provided the
most definitive info on coronal magnetic field strengths to the
research community. Parallel with this mission, ground crews and
satellites were observing a ground station and a NASA Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory satellite. The data from each could
eventually lead to better prediction of the coronal mass ejections
that launch solar storms and impact the world's access to satellite
communications and power grids.
While not the star of the show, the white C-130 operated by the
National Center for Atmospheric Research is distinctive among the
mostly gray and green counterdrug and airlift mission planes that
transit Howard.
Since arriving, local airmen did everything from providing security
for the aircraft, to air conditioning the vessel -- as they do any
transient aircraft. Cryogenics people provided 30 liters of liquid
nitrogen for the researcher's onboard telescope every other day.
"We selected Howard as our base due to the reasonable prospects for
weather, and an airfield that can support the C-130 operations,"
MacQueen said.
An advance crew that traveled here in July was impressed with Howard's
facilities and the "positive" attitudes of it's people, said the
expedition's principal scientist Jeff Kuhn of the National Solar
Observatory. "It's a big collaboration we've been planning for
one-and-a-half years. Eclipses happen somewhere in the world every
year ... but a total eclipse is pretty rare. The option to use the
airplane surfaced one year ago."
The C-130 was the porter for the expedition, and supplied fresh air
straight through the roof, said the mission's solar physicist and
theoretician, Philip Judge of National Center for Atmospheric
Research. MacQueen and Kuhn lead the team that made the proposal for
the project three years ago, Judge said.
Kuhn and Haosheng Lin of the National Solar Observatory in New Mexico
designed the instrument package for the C-130. Ingrid Mann of
Germany's Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy designed an instrument
spar that points directly at the sun when extended through the
16-inch-wide doorway in the aircraft's roof.
After launching from Howard, the team stationed itself at an altitude
of 18,000-feet in the unpressurized payload area to monitor the solar
eclipse above the Panama-Colombia rain forest before returning to
Howard with the data.
(Courtesy of Air Combat Command News Service)
PHOTO CAPTION:
http://www.af.mil:80/photos/Mar1998/980275a.jpg
A National Science Foundation L-100, the civilian model of the C-130,
takes off from Howard Air Force Base, Panama. The sensor-heavy L-100
tracked a portion of the total solar eclipse over Panama's Darien region
Feb. 26. (Photo by Staff Sgt. John B. Dendy IV)
Last Modified by ALG on March 5, 1998.
Eclipse
