OK, it’s the final batch of pictures from the magazine’s trip to Kenya to see the solar eclipse of two weeks ago. Enough already with the lions! Thanks to all of you who have contacted me about your enjoyment from these images, and let me say that for anyone considering a safari to eastern Africa, I would heartily encourage you to do it. There’s really nothing like seeing all this wildlife in its natural environment; it’s a changing experience for...

On Astronomy ’s 2010 Annular Eclipse Trip to Kenya, I had enough bandwidth to send back reports of our activities but not to relay photos and movies back home. Now that I have arrived back in the U.S.A., I will begin posting pictures from the trip in our Online Reader Gallery's Trips and Tours section. The first batch concentrates on eclipse day, January 15, 2010. If you witnessed the eclipse, I encourage you to send your images to the magazine...

They told us we would be up early for the eclipse, with first contact beginning a short time after seven in the morning. But some of us had had no sleep for more than two days, and unfortunately it took a major effort to get me up — your editor almost caused one of the buses to be late setting off for Lion Hill, but I scrambled into repair and we set off for a 20-minute journey to a high ridge running along the hill, overlooking Lake Nakuru, where...

Oh, it feels good to be in Kenya. As I mentioned in a previous blog, several of us bound for the Astronomy annular eclipse 2010 trip had our journeys truncated due to bad weather in London, and got off to a late start. Thus, instead of leaving on Saturday, January 9, we flew from Chicago to London on Tuesday the 12th. We then had the good fortune of finding our London to Nairobi flight canceled. For whatever reason, about an inch of icy snow on the...

On Saturday, I’ll head to Kenya with a group of about 30 Astronomy readers to experience the January 15, 2010, annular solar eclipse. The eclipse will last an amazing 8 minutes, 25 seconds. Our tour partner, and its superbly organized leader, is Melita Thorpe of MWT Associates. I’ll travel along to cover the event for the magazine and to speak to the group, and noted astroimager Dennis Mammana will be along with us, too. Aside from the eclipse, the...

Along with the other 186 people on our ship, the Victoria Prince, I found myself reporting from China during our last week with very limited Internet capability. Thus, I could not send images with the final blog posts during the week of July 20. To make up for this, I am now posting a selection of images from the last week of the trip that includes shots of eclipse day . Enjoy! Previous post: We visit a Revolutionary Photo credit: David J. Eicher

Here's my final blog from the China 2009 eclipse tour the Astronomy magazine editors have conducted, along with Melita Thorpe of MWT Associates. Sunday we travel to Shanghai, board a plane in the afternoon, and fly back to Chicago and then to Milwaukee. See all the images from Dave's tour in our solar eclipse 2009 trip gallery . This morning our group of 187, including Senior Editor Rich Talcott and his wife Evelyn, boarded buses in Nanjing...

Today our group of travelers left our ship, climbed aboard buses, and made a 2.5-hour journey from our dock to Huang Shan, Yellow Mountain , a national treasure of China. Although the weather was hardly favorable, with rain coming down strongly or sometimes partial clearing and fog and haze rolling by, we journeyed toward our destination through charming little towns, villages, and cities. The pastoral countryside was amazing in that every farmhouse...

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...

The day following the fantastic total eclipse, our 187 travelers on the Victoria Princess spent a good part of the day in Wuhan, a large city midway between Chongquing and Shanghai. We climbed aboard buses and traveled to the Hubei Provincial Museum to see historical treasures from the region. The name was familiar to me immediately as a mineral collector from Hubeite, an unusual species that was discovered in this province. See all the images from...