Photo: REUTERS/filesScientists plan to use a total solar eclipse that will be visible in Spain next week as a rare chance to learn more about the stormy, unpredictable nature of our star. Read: 'Blood Moon' to grace the sky as year’s first total lunar eclipse occurs todayMore than a century later, scientists will watch a total solar eclipse lasting a minute and 40 seconds appear across a swathe of northern Spain next week. Next week, CEA scientists will focus on the Sun's corona, the outermost layer of its atmosphere. During normal times when there is no eclipse, scientists study the Sun's atmosphere with satellites equipped with a coronagraph — "a filter that blocks out the photosphere", Brun explained. Lucie Green, a solar physicist at University College London working on the mission, told AFP that total solar eclipses were "inspirational for everybody, artists and scientists alike".