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On the Possibility of Measuring Solar Flattening from Photometry Measurements Taken during Solar Eclipses Seen from the Earth’s Surface or Earth Orbit

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Abstract

Solar oblateness is a key parameter that provides a strong constraint for understanding the variations in total solar irradiance as well as the differential rotation of the Sun. Furthermore, it takes part in the evaluation of General Relativity theory. In this paper, we propose a procedure to measure solar flattening based on modeling the light curve during a solar eclipse observed from the ground or from Earth orbit. We apply this procedure to synthetic data corresponding to the solar eclipse observed from Lakeland (Queensland, North Australia) on November 13, 2012. The results show that accurate measurements of the solar equator-to-polar radius difference can reach 1 km when based on the current DE430 ephemeris and the LRO DEM data (equivalent to \(1.4 \times 10^{-6}\) in solar oblateness).

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Acknowledgments

The J2000 frame data provided by SPICE system and ephemeris/topography data provided by JPL/NASA. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42030110, U1831132); Jean-Pierre Barriot is supported by a DAR fund in planetology from the French Space Agency (CNES). The Lakeland photometric data were acquired with special funding from CNES as part of the “ground-truth” of the PICARD satellite mission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Yunbo Wang, Jianguo Yan & Jean-Pierre Barriot

  2. Geodesy Observatory of Tahiti, University of French Polynesia, BP 6570, 98702, Faa’a, Tahiti, French Polynesia

    Jean-Pierre Barriot

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  1. Yunbo Wang
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  2. Jianguo Yan
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Contributions

Jean-Pierre Barriot and Jianguo Yan conceived of the presented idea. Jean-Pierre Barriot and Yunbo Wang developed the theory and performed the computations. Yunbo Wang wrote the main manuscript text with support from Jean-Pierre Barriot and Jianguo Yan. Jianguo Yan and Jean-Pierre Barriot helped supervise the project. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Wang, Y., Yan, J. & Barriot, JP. On the Possibility of Measuring Solar Flattening from Photometry Measurements Taken during Solar Eclipses Seen from the Earth’s Surface or Earth Orbit. Sol Phys 298, 76 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-023-02172-z

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