Space science education in Egypt and the 2006 solar eclipse

The space science research has been started in Egypt since 1910 by measuring the solar constant as indication of solar radiation at Helwan Observatory. The solar sunspot studies and its influence on the Nile flooding was erected and operated at Helwan as a first solar station in Egypt during 1957. Zeiss-Coude’ refractor was installed in 1964. Astronomy and space science educations started in Egypt at the university level since 1936 at Department of Astronomy and Meteorology of Cairo University. Undergraduate and graduate education in Egypt will be discussed in this work.The total solar eclipse observations on 25th February, 1952 in Khartoum have been done by on Egyptian–French group by using the Worthington Camera. Several international groups observed the total solar eclipse on 29 March 2006, in El-Saloum (Egypt). A coordinated effort partly undertaken in the frame of the French–Egyptian scientific cooperation permitted joined simultaneous eclipse observations of the solar corona. Several Ground base instrumental set-up has been prepared. Spaceborne quasi-simultaneous EIT and Lasco observations of SoHO have been used as well as TRACE observations in Lyman-alpha of HI. W-L images taken with and without a radial filter are processed to show the magnetic structure of the corona. Polarization analysis is performed to study the F-corona in the outer corona. Several filters have been obtained to show the distribution of the emission measures of the inner and middle corona. Spectra were obtained over several emission lines.