“The team informed us that the sky was clear and all instruments worked perfectly. There were two major experiments relating to imaging and other things using a telescope and spectograph,” Harish Bhatt, Dean of the Bangalore-based institute said.
The team headed by IIA Director Siraj Hasan conducted the experiments at Anji, a small hilly area near Hangzhou in China. Analysis of the data of these experiments will take some months. Another team, which was in Varanasi, managed to take photographs of the eclipse while the Patna team ran into an overcast sky, he said.
According to R C Kapoor, one of the scientists who camped in Varanasi, “it was a wonderful experience viewing the eclipse from in front of the Ganges,” he said. According to IIA officials, an eclipse provides a chance to observe the solar corona when the intense light of the photosphere, which is one million times brighter than the corona, is blocked out for a short while by the moon.
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