It looked grim the day before and grim the day after. But we stood under a blistering hot sky near Novosibirsk, Siberia, with nary a cloud in the sky on eclipse day. Never have I seen such perfect eclipse weather. The eclipse was beautiful, lasting 2 minutes 20 seconds, for our intrepid 160 travelers who came along with Astronomy magazine and MWT Associates to witness totality on August 1. We saw a gorgeous corona with pronounced streamers, a single prominence at “2 o’clock” on the Sun’s face, and dazzling diamond rings. What a spectacular show! Everyone who came along called the eclipse the visual experience of a lifetime, and I was surprised that nearly a third of our group consisted of eclipse first-timers.

The sights our group saw were numerous and amazing. Before flying to Siberia, we cruised along the Volga River on a German-built ship from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Standing on Red Square at Lenin’s Tomb was an awe-inspiring experience that obviously seemed inconceivable during the first part of my life. Going behind-the-scenes in the Kremlin, touring the museums there and seeing numerous historical artifacts of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Ivan the Terrible, and the last Romonovs was stunning.

In contrast to Moscow’s sprawling, rich city that covers many hills and works forest into countless blocks of apartment buildings, St. Petersburg offered us its strongly European flavor. Several hours spent inside the Hermitage Museum flew past quickly; the overwhelming opulence of Catherine’s Palace, Peterhof, and others, explained the growing schism over the ages between the Czars and the Russian people.

The national character of the Russian people seemed centered on the Second World War. It was their war, really, in their minds, as they lost 27 million of their citizens and pushed the Nazi hordes back from just a few kilometers of the center of Moscow to final victory in Berlin. This national struggle defines their character now, as May 9 (the German surrender date) is still their great holiday, and monuments and memorials to the “great war” dot the landscape everywhere.

Senior Editor Rich Talcott joined me on this fascinating trip, along with a group of experts that included celebrated author Dava Sobel, Jim Manning of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Caltech astronomer Michelle Thaller, Adler Planetarium director Paul Knappenberger, and astroimaging expert Dennis Mammana. Our group had a fantastic time and saw as much of Russia as we could possibly had dreamed of in the two-week span. Stay tuned on our site and in the magazine for more on this spectacular eclipse.