Total Solar Eclipse 2009

On Wednesday, 2009 July 22, a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow begins in India and crosses through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. After leaving mainland Asia, the path crosses Japan's Ryukyu Islands and curves southeast through the Pacific Ocean where the maximum duration of totality reaches 6 min 39 s. A partial eclipse is seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes most of eastern Asia, Indonesia, and the Pacific Ocean.

Two members of our department traveled to view the eclipse in India and China. This being the rainy season in most area of the totality path, the sky was cloudy and rainy. Dr. Debi Prasad Choudhary went to Varanasi, India where the sky was clear during the eclipse. He could obtain pictures of solar corona and diamond ring of the eclipse. The panel below gives some pictures.

Partial phase	Total Phase
Diamond Ring 1	Diamond Ring 2
Wide Field picture of the sky with eclipsed Sun	Press interview of Dr. Choudhary after event.

Andrew William Denio went to Shanghai, China to view the eclipse. The sky was cloudy and it was raining there during the eclipse! His story of traveling to eclipse site and some pictures are given below.

Andrew and Jiangpei at Shanghai Observatory after eclipse	Eclipse on Chinese TV
Shanghai street during the totality of eclipse	Participants in the conference with their "solar glasses" pretending to look at the eclipse though the overcast skies.

I arrived in Shanghai, China on July 20, 2009. It was two days before the solar eclipse. I was so excited. This was my first time to see an eclipse and I came prepared. I had my filters to look through and just bought a professional digital SLR camera with a solar filter to take pictures of the eclipse. I also had the fortunate opportunity to attend a scientific conference while I was in Shanghai.

I was a participant in the conference for "New Technologies for Probing the Diversity of Brown Dwarfs and Exoplanets." Along with sixty others, we saw presentations delivered from some of the top scientists working on technologies to see very faint objects in the sky, including planets.

The forecast for the week did not look good. However, I was optimistic. On Wednesday, July 22, 2009, I woke up in my hotel room and said to myself, "I am going to see a solar eclipse today." I packed up my camera and headed to the Shanghai Observatory. I joined other participants in the conference and we headed up to the top of the building (about 16 stories). The sky was overcast. But there were some patches of blue sky, and like I said, I was optimistic.

The start of the total eclipse was scheduled for 9:36 am and would last until 9:42 am. This was going to be the longest eclipse in a few hundred years. We waited for the clouds to move, but nothing happened. Time was soon approaching for the eclipse and we were all praying that someone would move the clouds out of the way. However, we had no luck. At about the time that the total eclipse started, it actually started to rain.

Although I wasn't able to see through the clouds, I was able to see the entire sky become dark. It was as if it turned from day to night in a matter of seconds. It was pretty exciting. I snapped a few pictures and video of the sky turning dark, but was unable to get any eclipse pictures with my new camera I bought for the trip.

As we left the roof of the observatory and went downstairs to the lobby, there was a TV displaying live images of the eclipse from all around China and Japan. There were only a few spots where people were not blocked by clouds. I was so determined to get a picture of the eclipse, that I took a picture of the TV displaying the eclipsed sun! It isn't perfect, but at least I'll have the memory.

I attended two more days of the conference, followed by two days of sight-seeing in Nanjing (the ancient capitial of China). I flew back to the United States on July 27th and was glad to be home.