Longest solar Eclipse Ever ViewedOn 30 June 1973, a Solar Eclipse occurred which lasted 7 minutes an
Longest solar Eclipse Ever ViewedOn 30 June 1973, a Solar Eclipse occurred which lasted 7 minutes and 4 seconds at any given spot, but which one group was able to view for more than an hour.A group of scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico, USA) had an idea to extend the period of totality. Their idea was to follow the Moon’s umbra* in two separate airplanes. One of these planes was a prototype which eventually became the Concorde SST.On the day of the eclipse, they intercepted the Moon’s Umbra while flying over North Africa at Mach 2.05 (697.5945 m/s). They managed to experience totality for 74 minutes.Flying at an altitude that ranged between 16 000 m and 17 700 m provided near perfect viewing conditions as atmospheric absorption was reduced and weather problems usually associated with solar eclipse observations were eliminated.Image Source:“We found this photo at this page (http://on.fb.me/1C7erYN) and its been shared around the internet in many places. We’ve been unable to locate an original source and suspect that information may be lost. If you have any information on the original source let us know, we’d love to get that correct!References and Further Reading:http://bit.ly/18fZjL0http://library.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/getfile?02-02.pdfhttp://bit.ly/1KT7fns -- source link
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