Artificial Solar Eclipses

Part of the mysterious, awe-inspiring allure of solar eclipses is their rarity, with the astronomical event happening incredibly infrequently in any one place and leaving people little opportunity to see them in their lifetimes. It seems the European Space Agency isn't in favor of the scarcity of solar eclipses, though, as it's developing a new technique to create solar eclipses at will.

Far from some Mr. Burns-style blocking out of the Sun, the ESA's solar eclipses won't even reach Earth. Rather, the new technique uses two satellites -- one to block the Sun's rays and one to capture the resulting effects -- to create mid-space solar eclipses for study.

The mission, called Proba-3, will help to more carefully study the Sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona -- an area that is usually impossible to study due to the brightness of the rest of the sun.