Why total solar eclipses are important to science?

Abstract

Abstract Despite today we have plenty of opportunities for high-quality observations of the Sun from both Earth and space, total solar eclipses remain a rare chance to explore the corona, its features and various atmospheric phenomena. Members of our team took part of 5 out of 6 Bulgarian expeditions for total solar eclipse observations ever realized. In the current paper we summarize the tasks we fulfilled and the scientific results we obtained. Special attention is paid to the investigation of the shadow bands that accompanied the last eclipse we witnessed – on 2019 July 2.