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is Solar Eclipse beneficial to man?if yes, how?

Yes, it is beneficial for research and studies and in some applications. Scientists have used solar eclipses as an important research tool for hundreds of years. Eighteenth century astronomers, including Edmund Halley, routinely monitored eclipses to refine the orbits of the Moon and Earth. In the 19th century, astrophysicists realized that the chromosphere, prominences, and the corona were important physical aspects of the sun, and they followed eclipses as the only way to study these intriguing phenomena. In the early 20th century, solar eclipses provided crucial tests of Einstein’s then-new successful theory of General Relativity.

Today, with space telescopes and modern coronagraphs it is sometimes thought that eclipses have little to offer in the way of science. This is not so.

To limit the scattering of sunlight, space-borne coronagraphs have had to block out the inner corona, and ground-based observations of the corona (excluding eclipses) cannot see the corona very far from the Sun. The Moon is still Nature’s greatest coronagraph!

Eclipses are also unbeatable ways to precisely measure the Sun’s diameter. Members of the IOTA routinely travel to solar eclipses which they observe near the edge of the path of totality. By stretching a team of observers perpendicular to the expected edge of the shadow’s path they are able to measure the location of the edge with a precision to less than 100 meters. This translates into a measurement of the Sun’s diameter with a precision of only 0.004 arcseconds, or 20 miles. According to such measurements, the Sun may have been 0.4 arcseconds larger in 1983 than it was in 1979. Is the Sun oscillating? It’s too soon to say. Some of the eclipse measurements are controversial, and more data are needed. IOTA members will be on hand for the August 11, 1999 eclipse and they intend to continue their work during future eclipses as well.

Some of the most fascinating eclipse research has nothing to do with astronomy. Biologists and zoologists sometimes use eclipses to study the circadian rhythms of living creatures. Between 1954 and 1975, two Polish zoologists, R. Wojtusiak and Z. Majlert, conducted a unique set of experiments in which they observed the behavior of mammals, birds, and insects during seven eclipses with varying degrees of coverage, including totality. They discovered that the daily habits of mammals were little affected by the eclipse, but that birds and especially insects were influenced. Under the Moon’s shadow, many species of birds manifested anxiety and roosting behavior, and nearly all birds stopped singing (which contributes to the oft-noted quietude of totality). Insects are affected even more. During eclipses studied by the Polish team, bees returned to their hives en mass, nocturnal moths appeared, and butterflies settled in the grass as though it were night. The most sensitive species, bees, have been observed to return to their hives during partial eclipses covering only 19% of the Sun!

Other biologists have followed the ground-breaking experiments of the Polish team with observations that confirm the influence of eclipses on the behavior of birds, insects, and even nematodes and plankton! More information about these studies can be found in J.B. Zirker’s book, Total Eclipses of the Sun.
There are many other research applications of solar eclipses, including global gravity measurements, investigations of ionization and radio propagation in Earth’s atmosphere and studies of asteroid dust and cometary debris in the innermost Solar System. The full range of research opportunities presented by a solar eclipse is too broad to review here. Suffice it to say that solar eclipses promise great value to scientific research for many, many years to come.

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