On Wednesday, 12 August, Europe will experience a total solar eclipse. The path of totality will cross Greenland, Iceland and Spain. Jana Hoderová, Vice-Dean at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (FME) at Brno University of Technology (BUT) and a mathematician, has once again joined the expedition led at FME by Professor Miloslav Druckmüller. For the Vědavýzkum.cz portal, she shares her experiences from this year’s expedition. Read her fascinating account.

(We will be updating the report every day – you can identify each new instalment by the date in the heading.)

A solar eclipse – for some, a once-in-a-lifetime experience around which they plan the timing and destination of their holiday; for others, something that would never make them look up at the sky. And then there is another category of people – scientists and enthusiasts who see a deeper meaning in this phenomenon.

Armed with a carefully thought-out strategy and sophisticated equipment, they set out to capture images of the solar corona and then spend many hours studying and discussing the structures they have managed to detect. The Solar Wind Sherpas are among those embarking on this quest – a Czech-American team comprising researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi and FME BUT, as well as enthusiastic FME students and graduates.

This time, my observation site is in the village of Flateyri in Iceland. After a year of intensive preparations, it is finally time to make our way to an Icelandic fjord.

What awaits the determined researchers and enthusiasts this year? And how has this year’s expedition been affected by cuts made by the Trump administration? The key points are summarised in the press release Without a NASA Aircraft and Part of the US Funding: FME Mathematicians Set Off to Observe a Total Solar Eclipse.

Saturday, 8 August: Five Teams – One Shadow

The expedition did not begin at the airport – planning started years in advance. The equipment is continually upgraded and tested. The final three days before departure are devoted to carefully packing and weighing our suitcases. Equipment is rearranged and repacked to meet weight limits. We consider what we can risk putting in checked baggage and what needs to go in our hand luggage. Each mount is packed in a separate suitcase, while cameras are packed together according to the pairs in which they will be used.

The aim is to minimise potential losses if any piece of luggage fails to arrive. We can do without a swimsuit, a winter jacket or a hat, but the equipment is irreplaceable. On Thursday, 6 August, fourteen suitcases disappear into the depths of Prague Airport, bound for Keflavík via Helsinki.

Thirteen suitcases arrive in Keflavík. It may seem that there is still plenty of time before the eclipse, but the expedition relies on equipment that has been prepared for a year or more. And one suitcase is thousands of kilometres away. The airport staff are extremely helpful and locate our missing suitcase in Helsinki...

Keflavík Is Not the Destination – It Is Only the Beginning

There is no time to rest after the flight. We set off by car towards a fjord 450 kilometres to the north, with a six-hour drive ahead of us. Compared with the tropical temperatures back in the Czech Republic, Iceland is a chilly 9°C, with relentless rain and strong winds. It is quite a dramatic change in temperature. At one point, the car even beeps to warn us that the temperature has dropped to 4°C. The days are long here, and even at midnight there is still a fair amount of twilight, which makes driving much more pleasant than navigating winding roads in complete darkness.

We are surprised when, after about 30 kilometres, the asphalt road suddenly stops being asphalt. Reconstruction work is under way, and heavy machinery is all around us. Before long, we are driving on dirt and stones. Above all, we are relieved that the road is not closed and there is no diversion. There are not many alternative roads here that would allow you to bypass a closure easily. A diversion can mean hundreds of extra kilometres and many additional hours of driving. We are utterly exhausted, but everyone arrives safely at 2 a.m. at Helen and Siggi’s home in the small village of Flateyri.

Helen and Siggi’s house is an oasis and brings a very human dimension to this year’s expedition. They have generously agreed to accommodate us in their home, make do with less space themselves and share their house with us, our suitcases and all our equipment.

One Suitcase Is Still Travelling

Seven people are in Flateyri, thirteen suitcases are in Flateyri, and seven backpacks are in Flateyri. The fourteenth suitcase, containing an AZ-EQ5 mount and one “guillotine”, is still in Helsinki. We hope it will arrive. We are going to need it.

Solar Wind Sherpas Since 2006, mathematicians from Brno have been collaborating on solar corona research with a team led by astrophysicist Shadia Habbal from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi. The international team is known as the Solar Wind Sherpas, a name referring to the fact that the researchers themselves transport and carry all the equipment they need to observe and record total solar eclipses – much like Sherpas in the Himalayas. “The final image that I create after the eclipse using specialised software is produced by processing approximately 100 GB of image data. Although we observe the eclipse through the Earth’s atmosphere and therefore have poorer observing conditions than a space probe, our expertise combined with US funding has enabled research demonstrating that during a total solar eclipse it is possible to capture images that, even today, cannot be obtained from space by any available method,” Druckmüller explains. The data obtained help astrophysicists better understand the physical processes that determine the structure of the corona and the sources of the solar wind.

Sunday, 9 August: Where Is Our Suitcase?

Helplessness. Until Friday, the app had provided clear information, including the location of our missing suitcase. On Saturday, it went silent. Emails and phone calls get us nowhere over the weekend. During Saturday, we work out what to do if we have to manage without one of the mounts. The thought that the suitcase might be sent back to the Czech Republic is terrifying. Outside, the weather is absolutely dreadful. Gusts of wind batter the house, the bushes outside bend in the wind, and the rain just keeps falling.

On Sunday morning, I set off with Pavel Mikuláček, a doctoral student at the Institute of Mathematics at FME BUT, for the tiny airport in Ísafjörður, 22 kilometres away, without having received any information at all. We want to find out what is happening in person. One small building, one counter, one member of staff – and behind him, standing against the wall, is our suitcase.

My excitement is apparently enough for the man behind the counter to hand me the suitcase without asking me to identify myself or even show the lost-luggage report.

After Two Days, the Sun Finally Came Out

After two days of wind, rain and searching for the most optimistic weather forecast we can find, the Sun finally appears. For the first time since our arrival, we can actually begin doing what we came here to do. It is not enough simply to configure software and camera menus in the living room; we also need to assemble the mounts that will hold our instruments.

Helen and Siggi’s Garden Becomes an Observatory

An ordinary family home in the Icelandic village of Flateyri, with a population of around one hundred, serves as our base and is gradually transformed into an improvised observatory equipped with cutting-edge technology.

There is an important paradox here. The main goal of the expedition is to observe the solar corona, which will appear in the sky on Wednesday, 12 August, when the Sun is completely covered by the Moon. But before totality arrives, we need the Sun to be clearly visible in the sky so that we can set up our equipment. There is a lot to do – we need to align the equatorial mounts so that they track the Sun perfectly across the sky and adjust the lenses so that they all point towards the Sun in parallel. If conditions allow, we also want to collect some of the calibration data in advance.

I mentioned that the mount needs to be correctly aligned. Because of the location of our observation site, we cannot use Polaris, the North Star. In such a situation, accurate orientation towards north is extremely important – but even that is not straightforward. Close to the metal structures of buildings, determining north with a magnetic compass can be problematic.

Most of the problems are gradually being solved. One important screw, however, will require a little more time, some improvisation and an angle grinder, which our hosts fortunately lend us. The success of an experiment sometimes depends not only on an expensive camera but also on a completely ordinary mechanical component...

News from Spain: Every Team Has Its Own Problems

We receive only fragmentary updates via WhatsApp from the teams whose observation sites are in Spain. The guys from the Technika Photo Club on Mount Trigaza are facing a different set of problems – swarms of small flies, strong winds snapping tent poles, fires on the horizon and a haze of smoke on top of everything else. Conditions are far from ideal anywhere.

A Multi-Site Strategy

Because the success of our experiments depends heavily on the weather, our seven-member group in Iceland is preparing to split up. If we all stayed in one place, a single band of cloud could ruin the work of the entire expedition. By dividing the people and equipment between several locations, we increase the chances that at least one team will have clear skies during totality.

Pavel Štarha, Aneta Zatočilová and two BUT students will soon set off for their observation site in the town of Stykkishólmur.

I am staying with Jindřich Nový and Pavel Mikuláček. Jindra has already scouted locations we could move to – if the weather in Flateyri is bad – even on the day of the eclipse itself. This means that even Flateyri is not necessarily our final location. If a decision has to be made, it will not be an easy one for Jindra.

Iceland is Iceland. Its weather is endlessly varied, and Sunday in Flateyri ends with an idyllic sunset.

Did you enjoy this series from the solar eclipse expedition? Look out for the next instalment on Vědavýzkum.cz.