Solar eclipses as an astrophysical laboratory

Astronomers no longer have to wait for a total solar eclipse before they can make meaningful observations of the Sun's corona. Earth- and satellite-based coronagraphs make such observations routine. But as Jay Pasachoff explains in a Review (one of a series commissioned for the International Year of Astronomy, collected on http://tinyurl.com/prhcqy), a new generation of eclipse studies is linking solar observations from satellites with ground-based observations in spatial, time and spectral-resolution domains that are inaccessible from space. Eventually, as space-based solar telescopes proliferate, they may take over completely from Earth-bound observation. But for the next 600 million years or so — until the Moon's distance from the Sun increases such that its disk becomes too small to block out the sunlight — the solar eclipse will remain one of the best shows on Earth.