Hello friends!
I have some really exciting experiences to share with you.
The Total Solar Eclipse [TSE] of July 2009 was the longest eclipse of 21st century.
Though the path of TSE was scheduled to pass through my home state, Gujarat, as well as traversing the country through central as well as the north-east, the geographical situation of the Indian sub-continent did not favour the visibility of the eclipse as July end is middle of ‘Monsoon’ in India.
So, when the opportunity to enjoy the longest eclipse from China came our way, we decided to grab it! Of course, a major threat when deciding China as our venue, was also cloud cover. After a rigorous and detailed study of the climate & weather data, we decided on Wuhan, a city located in the east-central region of China’s Hubei State.
Our team was made up of 12 members from India including my wife and me. Except for the two of us, all the rest of the team was from Mumbai. The team was eager to view and document the eclipse in a variety of scientific ways – using equipment and methods like the coronagraph, flash spectrum, spectroscopy, etc. We were going to carry 5 still cameras of various lens calibers as well as 2 movie cameras. These would be mounted on our telescopes to record this unique celestial phenomenon which would not be as long, again for decades.
In order not to be foiled by the vagaries of the unpredictable monsoon, my wife Urvi and I reached Mumbai on 16th July, a day before the departure. We spent one day at Mumbai and 8 members of the group left for Wuhan at midnight on the 17th. The Singapore Airlines flight first took us to Singapore and after changing flights there, we reached Shanghai. It took nearly 12 hours from Mumbai to Shanghai. At Shanghai we tried to beg off the steep extra baggage charges, due to the heavy equipment we were carrying. But to no avail! We had to pay a huge sum. After luggage booking, we all went for a joy ride in one of the fastest trains called ‘Maglevs’. Its highest speed, which was during the rush hour, was an incredible 431 km/h while otherwise it cruised at 301 km/h. We bought round trip for 80 Yuan and enjoyed 16 minutes of to and fro ride. It was an incredible experience. Thereafter, we did not have much time left to board our flight to Wuhan. We reached Wuhan same night i.e. 18th July.
Our hotel, the ‘Howard Johnson’ was a 43 story five star riverfront property on the west bank of the Yangtze. After checking into our rooms, we went straight away to the 43rd floor to check out the terrace for observations. But we were in for a shock – though we had been assured that the terrace would be available for us, there was a revolving restaurant on the terrace with no access to the sky! I guess a lot got lost in translation because we had expressly requested use of the terrace at the time of booking even before we had left India. A ray of hope emerged when we found out that there was a terrace on the 8th floor of the hotel, facing east. So, we decided to rest and check it out the next morning.
19.07.2009
We started our morning with a survey of the 8th floor and liked what we saw: the place had a perfect viewing space and security too for our equipments. Just to be on the safe side we decided to scout out other possible viewing sites. Just across the road, on the riverfront was a board with TSE viewing details in the Chinese language. We tried to communicate with the authorities, but due to the language bar, we couldn’t. So we gave up and headed around the hotel to buy some groceries. Since the hotel was not located in the tourist district, there were no vegetarian restaurants or eating joints. At the supermarket too, we got by by playing ‘dumb charades’ with the staff to look for different products. It was really hilarious for both sides.
We spent the afternoon, assembling our equipment for the TSE.
In the evening, we once again went down to the riverfront and tried to find out if an electrical outlet would be available to run our equipment in the scorching 34 degree heat. Though the temperature was actually lesser than that in Ahmedabad, the sun there had a burning intensity that really fried the skin! Our futile attempts at conveying our needs prompted our team to think of attempting the impossible – learning Chinese overnight! After dinner back at the hotel, once more we went up to the terrace 43 stories up looking for possible ways to set up our equipment on top. One helpful attendant showed us a portion of the terrace that was accessible, but to our luck, the door was sealed as also, west-facing L. So we climbed back down to our room and started working on software calibration and other hardware.
20.07.2009
In the morning we all got up little early to recce the park again. Since the day before we had been hearing a piercing noise – like some insects make. At first we couldn’t find a single insect. Once one insect starts making a racket, more than 100 insects answer and this goes on for roughly half a minute. This din is followed by a long silence. After an exhaustive search, I could found the insect - It was like a cicada.
Thereafter, we searched Wikimapia for interesting places as an emergency alternate to observe the eclipse. But the team couldn’t find anything interesting as the place we were looking for was underwater now. So, we came back to the hotel and asked the authorities for the final permission for 8th floor balcony. Thankfully, they gave us the permission – for we discovered that in China, the Total Solar Eclipse was considered a bad omen by the general public and hence the park that we had been considering as our venue would be closed for the day! This was really difficult to digest for us, astro-enthusiasts, who had come some thousand miles to especially enjoy the celestial show!
After retiring to our rooms, we first tried to Google some local amateur astronomer groups, but couldn’t find any. Then we found that there was a Science & Technological Institute in the nearby University area. We thought of visiting the same in the evening.
With thousands of doubts and questions in mind, we started working on our TSE experiments. My hotel room faced the river & riverfront and it was on 17th floor. I was looking at the park thru the binoculars when suddenly, I spied an equatorial mount of a telescope in the middle of the park with some security around. And close by, I could see some activity of local people clearing the ground and barricading the amphitheatre. We all rushed down to the park and saw some representatives of Wuhan TV clearing up the place. Even without communications, we could tell that a big event was being planned for TSE day, this was completely contrary to what the hotel authorities had been telling us all throughout!! Even so, we were very happy to see that there would be people around to watch the TSE.
Later after our TSE pre preparations were complete, we went down to explore the market place. We found Wall mart at 10 minutes taxi distance. There we saw a gathering of different breeds of dog. It was kind of meeting place for pet dogs. People were dancing, playing and passing time with some martial art practicing too. When we came back to the hotel to see about the permission for setting up our viewing from the 8th floor, they simply nodded ‘NO’ – ‘No Permission’ can be granted to anyone to view eclipse!!? With no recourse possible, we decided to set up all our equipment in the park with back up battery power.
21.07.2009
The day before the TSE was exciting for all of us. We decided to set up our equipment in one corner of the park just opposite our hotel. We reached there early morning rehearsing the TSE viewing protocols and started taking pictures and other notings of the sun. By noon, we were happy with the place, atmosphere and surrounding. But things were not rosy for long, one of the team members working at the place rushed back to hotel and informed that some volunteers were asking for police permission letter to perform experiments. We rushed to the site and tried to contact some authority, volunteer or police. After one hour of search, we found a police station with only Chinese speaking policemen. We played ‘dumb charades’ with them for nearly half an hour, showing a few letters from NASA, they understood two main things – one, we wanted a secure place to keep our equipment overnight and two, we wanted electricity. And yes, finally, they gave us all the facilities that we were looking for! They gave us permission to put up our equipment on their own terrace and allowed us to use their electricity outlets too! They also permitted us to leave our equipment over night J. What a relief that was!!
Here we were taking permission and on other side of the park, people from S&T, TV channels and other foreign groups started gathering in the park. We were really excited and were feeling lucky to choose this city which was right in the middle of the TSE path, the hotel being just opposite to river front and riverfront park where we found all the major science institutes, TV channels and amateur astronomer groups taking part. The park was completely changed into a science park. We came back with high hopes and rechecked all our equipment for the next day – the D-day!!
22.07.2009
We got up really early today – and horror of horrors! - saw some clouds on the horizon! But thankfully, they were not very thick so we did not expect any problems. We got ready and went to the spot at 5:50 am, where few members of the team had slept on the terrace with the equipment. We started giving final touches to our cameras, laptops, video cameras, spectrometer, etc but on the other side, in the sky, we saw a big solar halo with sundogs. We were not happy with the signs; since it indicated more clouds on the way.
The first contact of the moon with the sun was recorded at 8:15 am local time. Though it was a bit cloudy, the sun was hot enough. We had to apply sun screen lotion! As the eclipse progressed, we saw few more clouds in the north and south too. Our hearts beat erratically! We so wanted to enjoy and record every bit of the longest eclipse of the century! Cameras, videos were recording the many moods of the sun, atmosphere, human behavior and surrounding. Totality was nearing but clouds were also thickening dangerously. Just 3 minutes before the totality, we had to start marathon photo schedule of nearly 130 photos in 9 minutes. We started the same with automatic programming, but the visibility of the sun was decreasing drastically. We started loud chanting of “Hanuman Chalisa”; Hanumanji being son of the wind in Hindu mythology, we prayed for the wind to blow the clouds away! Police and other media persons also started clapping with us even tough they did not really understand a word of what we were chanting.
The totality took place at exactly 9:24 am local time and it was all completely dark. The lights on the street were on, all the buildings were lit up, people were cheering as one, but we were still praying to see the totality. The sky color was pitch dark, some shine was visible on the far horizon. Though the camera was programmed to take pictures with specific shutter speeds and apertures, but looking to the cloudy situation, two cameras were kept on automatic software programming and in one camera, I started clicking manually. I felt as if was appearing for a final exam of photography. I was looking for one opening in the clouds to see the totality so as to capture the corona. The totality was reached but still, there was no opening. Suddenly, I saw a faint light from the cloud and with my past experience of photography, I took one picture with 5” exposure and it worked. I was able to capture the corona with total eclipse! The time was running out - Suddenly we noticed that 5 minutes and 39 seconds were over and a wave of light appeared through the clouds. All the cheering stopped and the sun was visible again. The TSE’s exciting phase was over and the nearly 1.50 lakh people present in and around the park started dispersing. The tempo was over, many of us were sorely disappointed because we could not perform any scientific experiments. It was really hard to believe that the sky that was clear till yesterday got crowded with clouds for this morning only. By the end of the TSE, clouds also disappeared from the path of the sun. Phones from India started ringing and we came to know that only Varanasi was lucky enough to see the TSE.
We started dismantling all the equipment. My camera was still capturing receding image of moon’s limb from the sun. By the last contact at 10:46 am we saw, that there were only a few of us in the park. We went back to the hotel with the satisfaction of having taken at least one picture of the totality!
In an uncertain world, that’s success indeed!!
Tanmaye Vyas
+91 99798 61071
