NASA to fly aircraft along eclipse route to study the sun and Earth's atmosphere

April 4 (UPI) -- NASA will deploy aircraft to follow the route of Monday's total solar eclipse to collect data on the sun and the Earth's atmosphere.

"With the sun's main light masked, the much dimmer solar corona becomes visible to the naked eye," NASA said in a blog post Tuesday, "This provides scientists a unique opportunity to study this mysterious region of the sun.

NASA WB-57 jet aircraft will fly along the route of the eclipse carrying spectrometers and other instruments to make observations of the sun's corona and Earth's atmosphere.

"The brief blocking of sunlight also allows scientists to study this mysterious region of the Sun," NASA said.

Shadia Habbal, who is in charge of one of the experiments, said "by extending the duration of totality, we're increasing the duration of how much data we can acquire."

"Habbal's experiment will fly spectrometers - which record specific wavelengths of light and cameras. The instruments will measure the temperature and chemical composition," NASA said.

NASA also hopes to use the opportunity to study the Earth's atmosphere.

Additionally, aircraft will carry an instrument known as an ionosonde, which will bounce radio waves off of Earth's ionosphere to observe possible changes caused by the eclipse.

"It gives us an opportunity to understand how changes in solar radiation can impact the ionosphere, which can in turn impact some of these technologies like radar and GPS," said ionosphere project leader Bharat Kunduri.

NASA plans to stream the eclipse on its website and on NASA+ on NASA TV from several locations and has released a map showing the path it will take across the U.S.