What can the eclipse tell us about the corona’s magnetic field?
Scientists want to directly measure the forces behind the wispy dancing plasma in the sun’s atmosphere
![sun illustration](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/story-6_main_A.jpg?fit=860%2C460&ssl=1)
SIGNS OF LINES The sun’s magnetic field is connected to one in the corona, which is much weaker and therefore harder to observe. Together, they form a twisted mess, illustrated here as white lines (based partly on a model) over a 2016 image of the sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL