Carefully following weather reports and satellite imagery through the hours leading up to the great Asian solar eclipse, we knew we might well be in trouble. Rather than pushing on eastward to Wuhan, we stopped our ship, the Victoria Princess, at the city of Yichang, well to the east, and had wonderful success. A wisp of cloud hung over the Sun just as first contact occurred, but then it slid to the east, and we had the Sun hanging in a cloudless sky. Given the poor conditions over much of the region, we felt exceptionally fortunate and gave numerous high-fives to Melita Thorpe, our tour partner, who made the call to stop short.
See all the images from Dave's tour in our solar eclipse 2009 trip gallery.
A crowd of about 100 passengers filled the ship’s top deck in temperatures in the low 90s during the partial phases. Another hundred or so people went onto land into a nearby park to set up astroimaging equipment and share their eclipse glasses with the local children, who filled much of the park's perimeter. A long bridge well behind us, westward on the Yangtze, filled with thousands of local citizens who lined the walkway to see the amazing spectacle.
The eclipse was one of the best we had ever seen!
Rich Talcott, SETI Institute astronomer Frank Drake, and I monitored times, and Frank called out major events to the crowd on ship. The eerie left fell gradually downward following first contact as the shadows on the ground slowly sharpened. As we approached second contact, at 9:19 a.m. local time, we knew we were in for a treat and would see the whole eclipse in a clear sky.
The psychology of an eclipse crowd changes dramatically in the last minutes before totality. People jig and dance around. An occasional scream of joy rings out. People snap lots of images with their digital cameras. The thrill of seeing the Sun's disk grow slimmer and slimmer provides a kind of euphoria that resonates throughout the assembled mass of humans, many of whom have seen several eclipses before but an equal number being “eclipse virgins," first-time viewers of totality.
Suddenly, a brilliant flash occurs as the diamond ring signals the commencement of the total eclipse. The deep horizon twilight darkens significantly; the flash of sunlight through the Moon's last valley transforms into a magnificent flower of corona, the Sun's hot atmosphere, surrounding the intensely black disk of the Moon. Screams of joy ring out across the deck! Shouts and laughter and applause! It's a go and a success, and this is one of the most beautiful eclipses anyone has ever seen, as you never quite know what the details are going to be like beforehand.
The eclipse is perhaps the darkest any of us has ever seen, in part because the Moon is relatively close to Earth now (which also made the eclipse long). The corona is elongated and asymmetrical, as we knew it would be near solar minimum, but it has many delicate streamers of material coming out radially and attractive polar brushes easily visible to the naked eye. Many bright stars and planets pop out of the darkness, Venus straight overhead, Sirius, Mars, Betelgeuse, and other stars of the Winter Milky Way. It isa glorious sight!
And then, that 5 minutes plus of totality, the longest eclipse any of us will ever see again, is over. A brilliant diamond ring flashes again, signaling the end of the best phase. As the old saying goes, any eclipse of any duration "lasts just eight seconds after it's over." The sheer joy, hoots and hollers, on deck are overwhelming. Suddenly the eclipse chasers are immersed in a kind of nonstop party to celebrate what they have seen, almost to the point of forgetting the last half of the eclipse is still going on. It is the greatest observational party of amateur astronomy, and everyone has had total victory.
Afterward, I spoke to the ship's passengers about deep-sky objects of the Southern Hemisphere to provide a change of pace and to take the conversation from the solar system out into the deeper cosmos. The great questions passengers had about the size, shape, age, and contents of the universe demonstrated their knowledge and supreme interest in the big questions of astronomy, ones that inevitably lead to how and why we are here and where we're going as a civilization.
A fabulous dinner finished off the day.
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