AHAC 2020 Poster 5 - Stratospheric Ballooning Investigation of the 2023 and 2024 Eclipses - Tapper
Channel: Stratospheric Ballooning Association
Date: 18/09/2020

The St. Catherine University High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) team plans to investigate the 2023 annular and 2024 total solar eclipses to observe stratospheric changes in the atmosphere during these events. The summer of 2020 was used by our team to plan out launch location areas, exploring higher education institution locals to partner with within the path of obscuration, and better understanding the different types of eclipses. We will observe the 2023 annular eclipse in the San Antonio,Texas area and the 2024 total solar eclipse in the Indianapolis, Indiana area. The investigations into these eclipses will obtain measurements for temperature, pressure, charged cosmic rays, and uncharged cosmic rays. Stratospheric changes such as the cosmic ray flux and the altitude of the tropopause, both which influence upper atmospheric weather, are important measurements to be recorded during these celestial events. The 2023 annular and the 2024 total solar eclipses provide a unique opportunity to measure stratospheric changes during these eclipses that are important to organizations such as NASA and NOAA.