{"id":269803,"date":"2026-08-21T22:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T22:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/269803\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T22:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T22:36:10","slug":"shadow-bandits-study-shadow-bands-during-solar-eclipse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/269803\/","title":{"rendered":"“Shadow Bandits”\u00a0study shadow bands during solar eclipse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pitt researchers study shadow bands during European solar eclipse<\/p>\n

The Pitt ‘Shadow Bandits’ chase solar eclipses to understand cause of unusual phenomenon<\/p>\n

\"Jill<\/a>PITTSBURGH \u2014<\/p>\n

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh are working to uncover what causes unusual shadows that are only seen moments before and after maximum eclipse.<\/p>\n

“When the moon fully occults the sun, the moments before and after that, we tend to see these little light and dark bands race across the ground,” said Giana Deskevich, a former undergraduate researcher with the “Pitt Shadow Bandits.”<\/p>\n

Deskevich said that shadow bands only occur during the first three minutes before totality and the three minutes after, making the observation window very limited.<\/p>\n

“Frankly, there’s no guarantee they show on any particular site,” she said.<\/p>\n

She also noted that little is known about shadow bands, including their true cause.<\/p>\n

The Pitt Shadow Bandits use high-altitude weather balloons and light arrays to observe conditions surrounding visible shadow bands.<\/p>\n

“There is a lot of interest in this very specific phenomena,” Deskevich said. “I think the more people engage with it, the more puzzled they are by it, as was I when I discovered it for the first time.”<\/p>\n

One of Deskevich’s former mentors shared that the team observed “very faint and slow” shadow bands in Spain during the Aug. 12 eclipse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Pitt Shadow Bandits will continue their research during upcoming solar eclipses in South America and Africa in February, and next August, when totality will last nearly six and a half minutes in North Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pitt researchers study shadow bands during European solar eclipse The Pitt ‘Shadow Bandits’ chase solar eclipses to understand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[16709,113764,3398,73,75,74,8039,113765,113766,113767,2009,113768,2553],"class_list":["post-269803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-astronomy","tag-eclipse","tag-pitt","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-science","tag-shadow-bandits","tag-shadow-bands","tag-solar-eclipse","tag-space","tag-totality","tag-university-of-pittsburgh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}