About
Scientists at the edge of the shadow
An international team founded in 1995 by Dr. Shadia R. Habbal. We carry observatories to the path of totality — often to places with no observatory at all.
The Solar Wind Sherpas began as a small group of solar physicists who understood that the corona — the Sun’s outer atmosphere — is only fully visible to the naked eye, and to certain optical diagnostics, during a total solar eclipse. Space-borne coronagraphs occult the inner corona. Totality does not.
The name is literal. Each expedition moves specialised imaging systems, spectrographs, tracking mounts, and power into remote desert, ice, mountain, and coastal sites chosen for the geometry of the umbra. The team has grown from six people to more than thirty scientists, engineers, and observers from around the world.
What unites the group is a single physical problem: why the corona is hotter than a million degrees, how the solar wind is launched, and how magnetic structure in that region shapes space weather at Earth. The work is published. The method is still to stand in the shadow with instruments that have been aligned in the hours before second contact.
Founder & team leader
Shadia R. Habbal
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaiʻi
Professor of solar physics at the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu. Habbal founded the Solar Wind Sherpas in 1995 and has led more than twenty scientific eclipse expeditions. Her research uses imaging and spectroscopy during totality to diagnose the corona, the solar wind, and coronal mass ejections.