Students from the University of Michigan did more than just gawk at Monday’s solar eclipse.
U of M aerospace engineering associate professor James Cutler and a group of students headed to the path of totality south of Fort Wayne, Indiana to watch and conduct research. Cutler said they were looking at how the atmosphere changes as the moon blocks the sun.
“So the eclipse, when it occurs, there’ll be like a 10-degree drop in the air,” Cutler said. “It’ll get colder. That temperature change creates fluctuations in the atmosphere. Those fluctuations kind of ripple out like a pebble in a pond, and our balloons help measure that rippling and helps us better improve our models for studying weather.”
Cutler says his team was sending balloons about 20 miles into the sky to gather information.
Cutler says you can follow the team’s work by going to MXL.space. That’s the University of Michigan’s exploration laboratory website.
