A Total Eclipse of the Sun, 2009 July 22nd from Eastern China


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Madrid '05 Turkey '06 Our guide - Jin Just after 1st contact Not all plain sailing The chromosphere revealed 2nd contact Bailey's Beads The eclipse sky Mercury on view Venus and Mars Eclipse sequence composite	This was my third total eclipse of the Sun, the first being clouded out in Cornwall in 1999 and the second being seen under spectacularly clear skies in southern Turkey in 2006. I've also seen an annular eclipse, where the Moon isn't large enough to fully cover the Sun but that's not strictly what's known as a total eclipse of the Sun (see here). Actually, being a pedantic soul, strictly speaking a total eclipse of the Sun isn't really an eclipse, it's a lunar occultation of the Sun, but perhaps it's easier not to go there at the moment! On this occasion, as was the case with Turkey in 2006, my services had been booked by Omega Holidays plc. Under their request, I travelled out to the eastern China region of the eclipse track back in 2008 where, after several days travel I had identified three excellent eclipse sites among several visited. The sites chosen were in the ancient water town of Wuzhen, the Sunny Resort Hotel in Anji and the Tianhuangping Reservoir, approximately 45 minutes drive from the Sunny Resort. Some general images taken during my 2008 inspection visit can be seen here. There were many factors considered before narrowing the original sites to the final three and to a certain extent a leap of faith had to be employed based on the findings from the 2008 visit. On that occasion, a rather extensive typhoon had recently passed down through Taiwan and had injected copious amounts of cloud and rain across much of the eclipse track; the weather was basically awful! The Wuzhen site was self contained, offered many attractive viewing areas and was the only site from which we saw the Sun on the reconnaissance trip! The Sunny Resort Hotel provided similarly extensive grounds in a very attractive setting with all the facilities of a luxury hotel nearby. Finally, the Tianhuangping Reservoir site required a bit more effort to get to but offered a greater clarity of sky being at an altitude of 900m. On this occasion, I was travelling out with my fellow astronomer Paul Money. Paul was to spend his time at the Wuzhen site while I set up camp at the Sunny Resort Hotel with the intention of heading up to the reservoir with other intrepid eclipse chasers early on the morning of the eclipse. Our journey nearly started on the 19th July as planned. As we arrived at Heathrow Airport 3 hours before departure, we were greeted with the news that our carrier had over-booked the seats on our flight and there was no room for me, Paul or several members of our group. It's not unusual for airlines to over-book seats and this happens all the time. What was unusual on this occasion was the fact that few, if any, passengers wanted to give up their seats a couple of days before an eclipse! Consequently, a cascade of over-booked passengers was growing as the deadline for eclipse travel loomed. After a night in the Ibis Hotel close to Heathrow Airport we returned for a second time early afternoon on the 20th to find that there were 40 passengers chasing 13 places on the next flight out. Fortunately, our places had been confirmed the day before so we were on! The flight out was around 11 hours in length and encompassed an accelerated period of night as we headed east. On arrival, I was met by my Chinese driver who drove me the 3 hour ride to the Sunny Resort Hotel in 4.5 hours, stopping for lunch (him not me!) along the way. I arrived at the Sunny Resort Hotel 3 hours before I was to give my eclipse presentation on July 21st. This quickly reduced to 2 hours after I'd checked the technical side of things in the presentation room, chatted with my Omega colleague Peter Truman and finally retired to my room for a rest. The technical aspects were thankfully spot on and a lot of thanks have to go to our superb Chinese guide Jin, who really looked after everybody during our time at the eclipse site. After retiring to my room and slipping off to sleep, I awoke in a panic thinking I'd missed my presentation(!). After a moment's confusion, I realised I hadn't and wandered down to the conference room where I delivered my pre-prepared material to an excited audience. Everything, apart from being bumped from my original flight and the over-extended drive to the Sunny Resort, had gone exactly to plan. However, the weather was about to throw a spanner in the works. In my room there was an entire desktop computer connected to the internet for me to use. Having done a bit of research before I'd left, I'd located a Japanese IR satellite feed which also covered eastern China and what was developing didn't look good. All of the way along the eclipse track for many miles to the west of my location and many miles to the east, right out into the pacific to the south of Japan, there was an extensive weather system forming. So bad was the look of the system that I decided to put it to our group that things looked dire. The offer was made to move to a new location should things continue to look bad but fortunately, the overriding decision was to stick to the original plan. Despite feeling very tired from the trip over, after dinner I retired to my room and kept vigil all night monitoring the Japanese IR satellite feed. If anything the weather system got worse throughout the night. This feeling wasn't helped by the air feeling extremely muggy and flashes of distant lightning! Early next morning we gathered in an otherwise deserted hotel lobby at around 04:00 local time. I told the group about the weather prospects but spirits were high and it was decided to continue as planned. Jin made us all some very welcome coffee which I drank while outside the hotel in the dark. It was cloudy, humid and the cicadas were chirping - making it feel decidedly tropical. Some members had decided to stay behind and enjoy the eclipse from the comfort of the hotel grounds and I must admit that feeling completely exhausted at this time, I felt rather envious! However, we all climbed on board our coach for the 45 minute trip up to the reservoir site and remained positive. The evening before I had been told that the controlled visitors to the reservoir had grown from 2,000 to 6,000. On hearing this news I had some concerns about the number of coaches that were due to be travelling up the single road to the site. In fact I was so concerned that I had suggested leaving an hour earlier than planned. Fortunately, I was overruled on this occasion. In the event the Chinese authorities had organised things perfectly and in the event there were no delays whatsoever. We arrived on-site and were shown to our small but perfectly adequate marked area on the reservoir's perimeter road. We all made ourselves comfortable and tried to ignore the fact that the skies were covered in copious amounts of cloud. However, there were patchy areas of structure in the cloud and this was moving quite fast so there was hope that we might see something. We must have been on site and set-up at around 06:30. At this time there were many other eager eclipse chasers all around and wandering around the perimeter road revealed a fabulous mix of nationalities and equipment. It also made it clear that our location to the south of the road was probably the best of the lot as we had a cooling breeze passing up the hill leading to the road which kept the temperature to a very comfortable level indeed. Numerous dragonflies appeared along with swooping birds and the odd cicada (they are huge up close!) all helping to make the experience just that bit more memorable. As the time of first contact began to loom, so did several breaks in the cloud. This allowed the imagers to focus their equipment and excitement levels started to rise - could we be lucky after all? First Contact (08:20:41 local time) The clouds thinned sufficiently for us to 'see' first contact or rather the period just after first contact when a tangible nick out of the top of the Sun's disc could be detected. This was a great relief to all as it meant that the eclipse was happening as predicted and that we had seen something! We watched eagerly as the Moon proceeded to take a progressively larger bite out of the Sun and despite some brief interruptions to the view, the general level of transparency of the cloud layer wasn't that bad. We could spot large areas where the sky was blue down stream of the Sun and knew that these regions were only going to help our sighting of the eclipse. A few thicker patches of cloud interrupted the initial partial phase and I can remember feeling a little regret at being complacent about our initial relatively clear view. However, these too soon dissipated and it looked as if we might strike it lucky and actually see totality after all. As the crescent Sun became thinner and thinner, there was a noticeable change in the appearance of the shadows on the ground. However, the thin cloud certainly made the sharp/fuzzy effects that I've seen during other eclipses harder to see. These are caused when the Sun's light is effectively presented as a slit - shadows cast at right angles to the slit appearing sharp while those in line with it appearing fuzzy. We tried to cast a small eclipse image through a pinhole in a piece of card but this too was difficult to see. As second contact approached the light took on a peculiar quality, a bit like that experienced under fluorescent lighting. To me, it also had a definite orange-ochre hue to it as well. As second contact rapidly approached, I took the decision to remove my camera's filter and it was at this moment that the effect of the cloud layer and its impact on exposure times became apparent. To achieve a successful shot under these conditions meant that pre-defined exposure tables wouldn't work and each exposure had to be bracketed and adjusted by hand. Second Contact (09:32:56 local time) The onset of second contact is awesome and something that's difficult to prepare for. For about 50 minutes after 1st contact, there was not a great deal to see apart from an ever growing bite being taken out of the Sun's disk, and this was only visible through special filters. However, as 2nd contact loomed, the light became noticeably dimmer and took on a strange quality as described above. You find that as you're senses start to take on-board what's happening, then more and more eclipse phenomena appear at an ever increasing pace and suddenly, after a relatively quiet start to the eclipse, panic sets in. As the last part of the Sun is hidden from view Bailey's Beads can be seen. These represent imperfections in the edge of the Moon where the Sun's light can still shine through. Then, as these too begin to dwindle, so you're left with one intense bead which gives rise to the first of two diamond ring effects. In the case of the 22nd July eclipse I don't recall seeing much of the 2nd contact diamond ring. I think the reason for this was more to do with me fiddling with my cameras than anything else. However, I do recall the moment when the first diamond ring begins to fade from view and it starts to go dark. To me it feels like falling down a well, an ever accelerating darkness, a bit like dimming the lights at night, slowly at first and then speeding up. Moments after second contact, it was pretty dark all around with a whooping from the crowds and the strangest of sights hanging up there high in the sky. The bright dot of Venus was clearly visible shining against the dimly lit clouds, the extent of which could now be seen clearly in the sky. The orange colour was again very evident to me and this remains one of my most vivid memories of this eclipse. Looking for other objects in the sky met with no success - there was too much cloud and scattered light. After many photographs had been taken and with lots of exposure adjustments and positional adjustments, my colleague Peter Truman stated that 3 minutes of totality had passed. How incredible a statement that was - it felt like we'd had about 30s worth! The corona was visible close to the dark Moon's silhouette but couldn't be seen extending that far away from the Sun - again due to the clouds. It was just before totality was coming to an end that I stopped fiddling with my camera and looked up at the eclipse with my own eyes - an awesome sight and a moment that I'll never forget. Third Contact (09:38:34 local time) As the northern edge of the Sun started to brighten, there appeared an intense dot of light - the jewel in the second diamond ring. I remember its intense star like appearance very well and it seemed to remain for some time before finally expanding into a thin crescent Sun. Totality had ended. In an instant the main part of the eclipse was over and many months of planning had come to fruition. The views had been plagued by cloud but as we later discovered, we had been among a fortunate few who had actually been able to see the eclipse properly. Many had been rained out and many had thick cloud in the way. The other Omega group in Wuzhen, in a an amazing stroke of luck, saw the clouds part just at the right moment and also saw totality, albeit truncated by the closing of the cloud gap about 3 minutes in. Fourth Contact (10:57:50 local time) Our luck remained throughout the last partial phase of the eclipse too and we were able to watch everything right up to fourth contact, when the edge of the Moon finally passes over the edge of the Sun to mark the end of the entire eclipse passage. After this time we packed our equipment up and headed back to the waiting coach. A huge butterfly which reminded me of a cross between a butterfly, a bird and a bat, flapped around us to give a final bit of interest to the what had been an incredible morning. The trip back was full of tired elation and on arriving at the hotel we heard that the few who had remained behind had also seen the amazing events of the morning both for real and on TV screens with news relays coming down from the reservoir. After arriving back at the hotel, I had lunch gave an interview to the BBC World Service and finally crashed on my hotel bed completely exhausted and too tired to even look at the photos I'd taken of the event. As I'd heard many times before, each and every eclipse has it's own personality and each is difference from the rest. How right that statement is and how privileged I feel to have seen the longest eclipse of the 21st century. Postscript As usual after finishing a report like this, I have remembered something else that's not been covered yet - shadow-bands. These are effects caused when the Sun is a very thin slit of light. The light passes through the Earth's atmosphere and creates a strange undulating pattern on the ground. I missed them during the 2006 eclipse because the ground I was standing on was pretty dark and mottled in its own right. My Sky at Night colleague, Dr Chris Lintott, using a borrowed white hotel towel on the beach, saw them at the same eclipse. This time, the clouds put paid to the visibility of any shadow bands but, and this is the bit I forgot, I did have a spare camera pointing down at a borrowed hotel bed sheet. The camera was set to take exposures automatically and, to be honest, I'd forgotten about the shots completely! Having just relocated them, I now need to analyse them to see whether anything that vaguely resembles shadow-bands did in fact record. If it did, I'll add it to the report in due course - stay tuned...	Thousands of watchers Home-sweet-home Will it clear? Crescent Sun Totality arrives Comparative sizes During totality Mid-eclipse corona Enhanced corona image Totality ends Diamond ring

All images and text are copyright Pete Lawrence, 2009 unless otherwise stated
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