Barbara Ferri and Martha Schaefer setting up their equipment with local people gathering in the background to watch - Henry Chow
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Barbara Ferri and Martha Schaefer setting up their equipment with local people gathering in the background to watch - Henry Chow |
By Paul Behrens
2008 Eclipse Viewing Report (Short Version)
[A longer version of this report, with more details about our site setup and activities in the days leading up to the eclipse and more photos, is included below.]
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| Paul Behrens explaining the eclipse to a local shepherd - Henry Chow |
Our Jasmine's China Adventure Tours group viewed the eclipse from a site northeast of Wuwei, in Gansu Province. Jasmine and I chose the location with the help of our eclipse consultant, Bill Sorrells of the Peninsula Astronomical Society, after much map and Internet research and two scouting trips to the area in the summers of 2005 and 2007. Jasmine and I were particularly excited by this trip, because it was to be our first total solar eclipse.
Our chosen viewing site was an open, grassy field at the top of the Hongyashan Reservoir, which is located approximately mid-way up the road from Wuwei to Minqin, on a stub of irrigated land poking out into the eastern reaches of the Gobi Desert. This site offered several important advantages: it was very close to the centerline of the eclipse; it was large enough for our group to be able to spread out comfortably even if other groups set up there; there was an unobstructed view of the western sky; and it was far enough from any of the nearby towns and villages that we wouldn’t be overrun with curious local people.
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| Jeff Buell and Ken Lum watch the partial eclipse through clouds - Pam Beato-Day |
Cloudy weather was a concern in the days leading up to the eclipse, but forecasts improved as we moved west. By the evening before the eclipse, the weather at the Hongyshan site looked just about as good as anywhere else, so we went there as planned. All through the afternoon leading up to the eclipse, the weather teased us with hints of clearing and patches of blue sky. As first contact approached, we could see clearing coming from the west, which gave us hope. During the partial phase, we often had a clear view of the eclipse through breaks in the clouds. Sadly, just as totality began, the sun dropped behind a band of clouds, and a full view of totality was obscured.
Even so, the eclipse was a spectacular sight, especially for first-time eclipse viewers like Jasmine and me. Watching daylight suddenly drop to deep twilight was very impressive, as were the sunset effects along the northern and southern horizons, at the edge of the path of totality. We were able to see the corona peeking out above the cloud band, and also Mercury and Venus shining brightly in the deep blue western sky. Some of our more serious observers were able to photograph prominences through breaks in the cloud cover. The most impressive thing of all, to these first timers at least, was when totality ended and a sudden burst of light flooded out across the cloud tops: "And there was light."
Jasmine and I agree that we certainly would like to see a "perfect" solar eclipse sometime--preferably next July during her 2009 eclipse tour!--but we wouldn't trade this year's experience for anything.
2008 Eclipse Viewing Report (Long Version)
Our Jasmine's China Adventure Tours group viewed the eclipse from a site northeast of Wuwei, in Gansu Province. Jasmine and I chose the location with the help of our eclipse consultant, Bill Sorrells of the Peninsula Astronomical Society, after much map and Internet research and two scouting trips to the area in the summers of 2005 and 2007. Jasmine and I were particularly excited by this trip, because it was to be our first total solar eclipse.
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| Our 2008 eclipse viewing site on the edge of the Gobi Desert - Brian Day |
Our chosen viewing site was an open, grassy field at the top of the Hongyashan Reservoir, which is located approximately mid-way up the road from Wuwei to Minqin, on a stub of irrigated land poking out into the eastern reaches of the Gobi Desert. This site offered several important advantages: it was very close to the centerline of the eclipse; it was large enough for our group to be able to spread out comfortably even if other groups set up there; there was an unobstructed view of the western sky; and it was far enough from any of the nearby towns and villages that we wouldn’t be overrun with curious local people.
In the days leading up to the eclipse, weather became a concern. Bill, Brian Day (our other eclipse consultant) and several other members of the group used their wireless Internet connections to check the forecasts for our eclipse site and for western China in general, and the forecasts were not promising. But as we got closer to Gansu, the forecasts slowly began to improve. Bill and the others were able to find hour-by-hour predictions of cloud cover for precise locations in Gansu and elsewhere, and by the time we got to Lanzhou, two days before the eclipse, those predictions began to show the cloud cover at our viewing site starting off heavy in the morning but dropping to almost zero at the time of the eclipse.
It was going to be a nail-biter, we decided, an impression that was strengthened when we emerged from dinner in Lanzhou on the evening of July 30 to find it pouring rain.
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| Cloudy weather in Lanzhou - Brian Day |
By the next morning, July 31, the rain had stopped, but the weather in Lanzhou was overcast and cool. We toured the city in the morning, including taking the cable car across the Yellow River to the heights on the opposite bank of the river for an impressive skyline view, all the while hoping for some break in the weather. Some encouragement came in the form of a phone call from one of our Chinese assistants, Mr. Yang Ke. He had left Lanzhou early in the morning to drive ahead to Wuwei; he had just crossed the pass over the mountains about halfway there and excitedly reported patches of blue skies off to the north and west, where we were going.
After lunch in Lanzhou, we set off along the route of the ancient Silk Road towards the western deserts and the eclipse. The weather remained solidly overcast for the first half of the trip, but as we crested the wide summit of the pass amidst dark-green fields of barley and beneath multi-colored Tibetan prayer flags, the sky in front of us did seem lighter somehow, even if truly blue skies remained elusive. By mid-afternoon, though, we were getting the occasional glimpse of pale sunshine through thinning clouds. Things were definitely looking up as we headed down the grade towards the desert floor.
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| Mogao winery tour - Brian Day |
Towards late afternoon, about a half-hour short of Wuwei, we stopped for a special visit at the Mogao Winery. Little noticed by the outside world, Chinese winemakers have been producing a variety of vintages from desert vineyards in Gansu since the late 1980s. Jasmine, Bill and I had discovered the winery on our 2005 scouting trip when our driver unexpectedly told us that his cousin was the manager there and asked if we would like to visit. We did, and tried some of the wines, and liked them enough that we decided to bring the group there this year for a special visit and tasting.
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| Steve Banville enjoys a generous tasting - Brian Day |
After a tour of the production facilities, the winery manager, Mr. Wang, who was our gracious host for the visit, took us to the winery’s “library room”, which displays a bottle of each of the wines Mogao has produced over the years. There, two young women in white lab coats stood by a table next to ranks of sparkling wine glasses and a special selection of Mogao’s recent vintages. They poured four varieties for us to sample: an Italian-style chardonnay, a pinot noir, a cabernet sauvignon, and a German Riesling-style “ice wine”. All were quite enjoyable, in a style more European than Napa Valley (Mogao has worked extensively with consultants from France and Italy). The “ice wine”, with a delightful (but not cloying) degree of sweetness, was a particular favorite with the group.
What a wonderful treat it was to enjoy a wine-tasting in such an unexpected place. It was big day for the winery, too: it turned out that we were their first tasting group ever (aside from foreign experts working as consultants). So while we were enjoying the wine, one of the winery employees walked around the room taking photographs of us to document this red-letter day in their history. Between the wine and the excitement of the visit, suffice it to say that we all left the tasting room a little less worried about the weather, at least temporarily.
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| Dinner in the orchard - Brian Day |
From the winery, we drove a short way up the road to have our dinner in a most unusual place: an apple orchard beneath an old, rammed-earth section of the Great Wall. Our tables were set in round, Mongolian-style tents scattered among the trees, with the dun-colored wall forming one border of the property. As evening deepened around us, we lit candles and enjoyed a feast of local produce that included roasted corn, potatoes, stewed lamb—and more Mogao wine. We reached our hotel in Wuwei shortly after dark, and were not discouraged to find that the latest forecasts still showed clearing late the next afternoon, August 1—eclipse day.
When morning came to Wuwei on August 1, it was still largely overcast, but the clouds lacked the heavy, leaden quality we had seen for much of the past two days, which surely wasn’t a bad sign. Jasmine and I met with Bill, Brian and the rest of the wireless Internet brigade, checked the morning forecasts, and decided that the prospects for our chosen site looked as good as anywhere. So Bill and Brian proceeded to give a presentation about the eclipse to the group in the hotel conference room while I rode out to the site with our “advance team” to do the setting-up.
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| "The Necessaries" - Henry Chow |
Since the viewing site was some distance from “civilization”, i.e., running water and electricity, we had to take pretty much everything with us, including shelter and seating. We had several Tibetan-style tents for the pit toilets, a truckload of comfortable chairs from the hotel for everyone to sit on, canopies and umbrellas for shade, even a large refrigerator for cold drinks (the kind you see vendors selling ice cream from on street corners in China). The crew dug the pit toilets, set up the tents, unloaded the chairs, and then, it being several hours before the group would arrive, took the refrigerator across the road to a nearby village and got a local farmer to agree to keep it plugged in at his home (and thereby keep the drinks cold) until we needed it. We also set up a “perimeter”, a border of white ribbon, around the site to help keep a clear zone in front of us, just in case local people (or other eclipse groups) should arrive en masse.
As the morning, and then the afternoon wore on, it became clear that we were going to be the only group viewing the eclipse from this area. And only a few local people came in on bicycles or motorcycles to see why someone was setting up tents on this isolated field, and didn’t stay long. So any worries about being swamped by crowds of curious locals, or fellow eclipse-chasers, faded away. And as the hours passed, the worries about the weather began to fade somewhat, too. Although it was still quite cloudy, the clouds were breaking up, and from time to time the sun shone steadily and beautifully for as much as a half-hour at a stretch.
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| On-site snacks: Yellow River Honey Melons and Watermelon - Henry Chow |
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| Annie Asche, Suzanne Farlin and Zhanna Buell exploring nearby sunflower fields - Henry Chow |
While we waited for the main event to begin, and most people set up their equipment, several of our group members passed the time by exploring the area around our viewing site, including a castle-like structure off to the northwest that local shepherds use as a shelter and resting place, and vast sunflower fields near a village off to the south. One group even found a bleached sheep skull, and brought it back to decorate the women’s pit toilet with an artistic display of branches, grass and flowers, bringing an unexpected Georgia O’Keeffe-ish note to the proceedings.
As the moment of first contact approached, everyone moved to their “action stations” with equipment at the ready. As the sun dropped in the sky towards its critical rendezvous with the moon, the clouds continued to break up, leaving tantalizing bands of clear blue in the western sky, separated by narrow bands of cloud. Best of all, far off to the west it was becoming evident that there was a very sharp edge to the cloud cover, and that the edge was slowly moving in our direction. With the sun dropping towards the horizon, and the edge of the clouds moving up off the horizon, it was going to be all about timing: where the sun and the clouds stood in relation to each other at the critical moment.
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| Brian Day and Pam Beato-Day set up their equipment as local people look on - Henry Chow |
Meanwhile, word evidently had gotten out about the presence of a large group of foreigners with strange-looking equipment out near the reservoir. We began to see a trickle, then a stream, of local people on bicycles and motorcycles coming out to see the show. Shortly before first contact, we had several dozen men, women and children standing along the rope line watching our every move. A shepherd even drove his flock up to the western edge of our perimeter and squatted on his haunches to gaze at us as the sheep contentedly nibbled on the grass nearby.
Jasmine walked over to the crowd and talked with the local people. Of course they were extremely curious about why we were there. She explained about the eclipse; most knew what an eclipse was, but no one seemed to know that there was going to be one in just a few minutes. While she was talking with them, Bill and several of the other serious amateur astronomers called out “First contact!”, alerting us the game was on. Jasmine then handed out some of our extra eclipse viewing glasses to the local people, telling them how to use them properly. Even the shepherd got a pair, and the small children were particularly excited.
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| Henry Chow viewing the partial phase - Barbara Chow |
As the eclipse proceeded towards totality, the cat-and-mouse game between the sun and the clouds continued. There were periods when the partially-eclipsed sun was visible clearly in a break in the clouds, and we watched intently through our special glasses as the “bite” the moon was taking slowly got larger and larger. Then there were times when the sun was obscured by a line of clouds for minutes at a time. The sharp edge of the clouds was rising, the sun was dropping…all we could say was that it was going to be close, very close.
And then, as the last few seconds ticked away, as the last gleam of direct sunlight was about to be covered by the face of the moon, the sun dropped behind one of the last remaining bands of cloud. A clear view of totality was not to be. For the entire period of totality, except for a few fleeting glimpses, the view of totality was more or less obscured by the clouds.
And yet…
And yet, as the saying has it, when life closes a door, it often opens a window, and it did so here, a window on probably the most spectacular sight I ever will see in my life. I can give here in words only the palest reflection of what I saw that evening on an isolated field in remote Gansu, but for what it’s worth, here it is.
Just before totality began, the surrounding daylight suddenly faded to a deep twilight. The speed of the drop in brightness was startling, and the effect of it on my perception of things was profound: I felt as though I was seeing and hearing things in slow motion, and at a great distance. I could hear gasps of wonder and excited chattering from the local people nearby, but the sound, like the light, was somehow muffled. The voices of people in our group calling out to mark time or announce what they were seeing were indistinct and dreamlike.
Totality begins - Jeff Buell
Not able to see the eclipse itself clearly, I first turned slowly around to see what effect the diminished light had on our view of the world. Off to the north and south, towards the edges of the path of totality, bands of red ran along the horizons, twin sunsets where no sunset had ever been. Behind us, to the east, where clouds were still piled high in the sky, ramparts and battlements painted in subtle shades of blue, white, gray, and a thousand other nameless colors, glowed softly in the dusk.
Total eclipse sky - Zhanna Buell
Turning back to the eclipse, I was surprised to see a crown of pale golden light shining above the top of the cloud, where I didn’t expect any light to be. “What is that?” I must have called out, because I vaguely heard a voice, most likely Bill’s, reply: “It’s the corona!” Meanwhile, just above and to the left of the eclipsed sun, two brilliant points of light gleamed in the shadowy sky: Mercury and Venus. Seeing them aligned in that way with the sun and moon, all of them hanging just over the western horizon, I was struck by a sense of boundless depth and intricate movement, the concept of the solar system becoming more than an idea to be understood, but a thing actually to be seen.
All this in less than two minutes, and surely it could have been enough for any first-time viewer. But the best was what came last. With totality still obscured by clouds, a voice in the distance began to count off the final seconds to third contact, the moment at which the sun first reemerges from behind the moon.
And then, as the countdown reached zero, as the first sliver of the sun’s face (invisibly, to us) moved from behind the moon, a sudden burst of light flooded out across the cloud tops, backlighting the entire band of clouds with a stunning intensity.
Totality comes to an end - Brian Day
My knees nearly buckled. It was as though I was present at the moment in Genesis when God said “Let there be light”: and there was light.
Shortly after the end of totality, the sun emerged from below the clouds, and we enjoyed an unobstructed view of the second partial phase as it dwindled away. Jasmine broke out the chilled Mogao wine, and we drank toasts to our experience, and to each other, as the sun set behind the mountains, with just the tiniest sliver of its surface still obscured by the moon. Just before we left the site to return to our hotel in Wuwei, I turned back to take one last look at our Hongyashan viewing site. The grassy field where we had spent the day was almost lost in darkness, but over the barren, craggy mountains on the western horizon there seemed to hang a glowing dome of golden light.
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| Sunset from Hongyashan - Jeff Buell |
“And the evening and the morning were the first day.”
It’s true, our eclipse viewing this year was not perfect. And we do very
much hope to see a “perfect” total eclipse some day—with luck,
on Jasmine’s 2009 China eclipse tour. But what we did see this year was
so spectacular, and so moving, that we wouldn’t trade the experience for
anything.
Read customer comments about the 2008 eclipse tour
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