Eclipse sheds light on sizzling sun

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Watch the timelapse of the spectacular solar eclipse.

Nature has bestowed a treat on solar scientists. About an hour after sunrise in north Queensland, the moon passed directly in front of the sun.

Those fortunate enough to be in Cairns enjoyed an early morning total eclipse lasting two minutes with the sun roughly 14 degrees above the eastern horizon.

For astrophysicists, it meant an opportunity to glimpse the outermost workings of the sizzling sun.

Eclipses give scientists their best chance to study the corona, the immensely hot outer atmosphere of the sun that boils off into space and wafts past the planets.

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Even with modern Earth- and space-based telescopes, scientists can only observe parts of the corona normally because of the sun's overwhelming brightness.

"At eclipse, we can observe the whole thing!" says Monash University solar physicist Paul Cally. "The striking thing about the corona at total eclipse is its beautiful fine structure dominated by the magnetic fields associated with active regions - called sunspots - and coronal holes."

These phenomena change over days or weeks, and so the corona appears to be quite different at every solar eclipse.

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Eclipse sheds light on sizzling sun