Observing The Great Ring Of Fire
Heliodyssey is a flagship project of Space India which under its initiative to involve students in active scientific research and collaborating learning with an intent to spread love for science and research in young scientists, allowed top students from all over India to be the part of a student scientific solar eclipse expedition and work with astronomers and scientists to be a part of the largest student experiment and recording of eclipse anywhere in the world.
On 26th December 2019, the world witnessed an annular solar eclipse nicknamed ‘the great ring of fire’. As one of the winners of the competition and eclipse ambassadors, I got the chance to observe, analyse and record the solar eclipse and conducted a detailed study of eclipse phenomena and its impacts on the earth’s atmosphere, variations in temperature and more in Muscat, Oman, the clearest viewing point for the eclipse.
Our team was divided to do certain tasks and experiments. My job, along with a few others, was to record and announce the eclipse contact times and the time when maximum annularity occurred so that this information could be correlated with the predicted timings from past simulations and calculations.
Besides my official task, I also enjoyed meeting like-minded people and befriending them, engaging in intriguing conversations and fun activities. The exploration aspect was also a very encaptivating experience with the marvellous views, cultures and more we discovered in Oman.
No medium can fully capture the experience of viewing a solar eclipse in person. It has created a memory that I will cherish lifelong and has incited a passion for astrophotography which I shall incorporate in my scientific pursuits and I wish to share more of these magnificent phenomena with the world.
I thank the enthusiastic and encouraging Space-India team for giving me this unforgettable experience and helping me realise my true potential and a fascination for astronomy. I look forward to further eclipse chasing excursions, and hope to observe a total solar eclipse one day.