The science

WHAT NATE
WILL OBSERVE

For a few minutes, the Moon blocks the bright face of the Sun and its outer atmosphere, the corona, becomes visible. NATE uses a chain of telescopes in Morocco to watch it for longer than any single place can.

Totality: the Moon completely covers the Sun and the pale corona spreads around it.
The corona during totality. Photo: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani, 2017

1. The corona

  • The Sun’s outer atmosphere. It stretches far out into space and is the pale, feathery light you see around the Moon during totality.
  • Millions of degrees. The visible surface of the Sun is about 5,500 °C, yet the corona is more than a million degrees. Why it is so much hotter is still an open question in solar physics.
  • The source of space weather. The solar wind and the large eruptions that travel through the Solar System start here.

2. Why it needs an eclipse

  1. Very faint

    The corona is roughly a million times fainter than the Sun’s disc. On a normal day the sky’s glare hides it completely.

  2. A perfect cover

    From Earth the Moon and the Sun look almost the same size, so the Moon hides the bright disc and leaves the corona just above its edge visible.

  3. What instruments miss

    Coronagraphs block the Sun with a disc of their own, which also hides the lowest part of the corona. During totality that region can be seen.

3. The NATE method: a relay along the shadow

The Moon’s shadow crosses northern Morocco from west to east. Totality starts in Tangier at 09:44:48 and in Oujda at 09:51:13 (UTC+1).

  • 10 telescopes are placed along the path.
  • About 4 minutes each. Every station records the corona while the shadow passes over it.
  • About 10 minutes together. Put in time order, the recordings follow the corona for longer than totality lasts anywhere.

A longer sequence shows how the corona changes and moves over those minutes, which a single four-minute view cannot.

Exact instruments and what each one measures: [TO BE CONFIRMED]

Diagram: four stations from west to east each record about four minutes of totality, starting one after another. Together they cover about ten minutes. Station, west Station Station Station, east Combined ~4 min ~10 min
Schematic only: not the real station positions or times.

4. Where the idea comes from

NATE follows the Citizen CATE experiments in the United States: a chain of small telescopes run by volunteers and students along the path of totality. The 2017 experiment was led by the U.S. National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the 2024 one by the Southwest Research Institute. NSO is a scientific collaborator of NATE, and its graduate students trained observer teams from Morocco and the Canary Islands in Spain in August 2026.

5. Why it matters on Earth

Eruptions and streams from the corona cause space weather, which can disturb satellites, communications and power grids. Better observations of the corona help scientists model it, and those models help forecast space weather.

6. Data and results

Data and results from the stations will be shared here after the eclipse.

Learn more

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