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WAITING
FOR THE SHADOW REPORTS AND OBSERVATIONS [PAST ECLIPSES] |
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Observer's report - Joe Cali
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On July 20th at 1:30am, I arrived in Beijing having flown from Australia. After a short hold up at the airport while customs decided if they would let me import the telescope in my suitcase, they said it was ok and let me go on my way. My friend Bengt Alfredsson was on his way from Sweden and arrived in Beijing 12 hours later. We spent ten days blistering our feet, pounding the pavements in Beijing, Xi An and Shanghai travelling under our own steam. On July 31st, Bengt and I joined up with the Eclipse City / Eclipse-Reisen 48 hour eclipse program including a charter flight to Jiayuguan ex-Shanghai. |
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CCTV Tower Beijing | Beijing Chengxiang Huamao Shopping Centre | Shopping Centre downtown Xian | Zhongda International Xian |
Travelogue We rented a pair of suites in Shanghai & spent five days looking around. On the first night we walked along the street near our apartment building. Bengt looked at a pizza joint. I said, "Don't even think about it, we are eating local tonight!" We walked into a hotpot restaurant. Neither of us spoke a word of Mandarin or Shanghaiese. It was a typical Shanghai hotpot restaurant - a small stove in the middle of the table - order the ingredients and a pot of stock and cook it yourself. The menu had no English translation and no pictures. So I said to Bengt, "What if I just tick a few things at random? How bad could it be?" Bengt just raised his eyebrows. After 15 mins a waiter arrived carrying a large stainless steel pot about 40cm diameter. He set it down and we looked in. To our horror, we saw a bowl full of fish heads floating in grey coloured water sloshing around in what must have been about 40 chopped red hot chilies. Bengt didn't say a word, he just looked at me, raised his eyebrows smiled and nodded. After the initial panic, I tasted some of the vegetables and seaweed that were lurking beneath the surface. It was really very tasty. Later, a waiter brought us more of the ingredients I'd randomly selected. These included wonton noodles, brocolli mushrooms root vegetables and seaweed. It looked horrendous and it was very very hot but it was really very tasty. Next night however, we tried the pizza restaurant! |
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After a few days in Shanghai, we made our own way to the airport to meet the Eclipse Reisen group at midday on July 31st. I recall that at Shanghai airport they didn't have a conveyor belt to load luggage into the plane. I watched as two baggage handlers threw my suitcase from the ground level up into the plane. Great! Thanks guys. Air China's bag handlers had already been busy progressively destroying Bengt's travel pack during the trip. In Xian, we resorted to sewing up the damaged section of his bag with a bootlace. My suitcase contained an 80mm refractor OTA and an equatorial mount, mounting tripod and camera tripod. We arrived in Jiayuguan at 9:00pm and went straight to a downtown hotel to an EC welcome cocktail & briefing. After the briefing we went out to the square to watch a cultural stage show put on to celebrate the eclipse. We returned to the hotel tired and after a high tech shower I went straight to bed. At 1:30am hotel reception called to remind me that they would be giving me a wake up call at 6:30am. Yep, thanks for that, I said wondering why, in the name of holy snapping fluffy ducks, they'd wake you up at 1:30 am to remind you they'd be waking you up 5 hrs later. Bengt told me they did the same to him. I awoke to my alarm at 6am. We went for an early breakfast. By this stage, I had not eaten for 24 hrs. I missed both lunch & dinner the day before. Just as I was leaving my room, the phone rang - my wake up call. Back to the room, grab the suitcase and camera bag. The suitcase contained my telescope, mount, my Manfrotto tripod Bengt's Manfrotto tripod and a couple of folding stools given to us by EC. It added about 6kg to the suitcase's usual 22kg weight. We were on the bus and on our way by 8am. I'll skip the fine details. During a busy morning we visited the Great Wall's first fire tower in Jiayuguan, the Jiayuguan Fortress and the Jiaquan wine spring. Following a late lunch we made our way to the eclipse site. |
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The Police checkpoint |
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Task:
photograph the corona at all shutter speeds between 1/4000s and
2s.
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Darkness Descends
Totality was approaching
rapidly. I looked at my "Atomic Clock."
It's a small white faced analogue travel alarm that I like to
use for eclipses due to the ease of reading the face.
11:10:10. Time flies. I almost missed the start
time for the wide field cameras. I started the cameras
on schedule but very nearly missed the window.
In the comparison photograph below, taken near Cameron Corner by Bengt Alfredsson during the December 4th, 2002 eclipse, the edge of the shadow was only 10km away in each direction so its edge naturally appeared at a higher altitude. The horizontal angle of view of both photographs is similar. Both were taken on 35mm film cameras using short focal length prime lenses.. Bengt used a Nikon 20mm While I used a Pentax 18mm Bengt's image has been vertically cropped. There was a whole lot of black below the horizon.
Totality & the tunnel, ©Bengt Alfredsson, 4th December, 2002.
Totality ended.
In my rush to complete the full shutter speed sequence, the diamond
ring appeared while my camera shutter speed was set too fast
but I was just happy to have rescued the situation.
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