The university’s observatory was just recently refurbished, and will now offer the best view in the house for this rare event.
After months of renovations, it’s no coincidence that the observatory will be re-opened again on the day of the much anticipated solar eclipse.
In fact, the observatory is actually pretty new to the university itself. For the past decade, the observatory has been closed. It was reopened last year.
Students spent a lot of time removing debris, painting, cleaning and refurbishing the telescopes. The eclipse here in Houston will be live streamed across the campus from that very telescope.
It’s all part of an experiment to record very low frequency, which are radio waves that they will record in the earth’s atmosphere during the solar eclipse.
University of Houston students are sending up a self-built instrument by several very large weather balloons. Those balloons will take the device up to about 90,000 feet.
The big interest in this experiment is the application of understanding very low frequency, which can help in finding the location of lightning strikes and detecting interference in radio communication due to the absence of daylight.
Three or four students will be driving to Nebraska on Sunday. The 12-hour trip will be to conduct experiments with a Very Low Frequency radio receiver, which will be floated up by helium-filled balloons 90,000 feet into the ionosphere during the eclipse. The instrumentation on board will take readings and detect interference in radio communication due to changes in the ionosphere caused by the sudden lack of, then return of, sunlight.