Tuesday, July 21, 2009

shanghai special: on to jinshanwei

SHANGHAI - We're going out of the city tomorrow morning to watch the eclipse at Jinshanwei, a town about 70 kilometers south of the Shanghai city center located on the shore of Hangzhou Bay.

Jinshanwei will play host to the longest duration of totality for this solar eclipse here in China - exactly five minutes, fifty-seven seconds. After Jinshanwei, the next best place to watch the eclipse will be at sea. The sun will be completely obscured by the moon for the longest time - what astronomers call "greatest totality" - over the Pacific Ocean, just off Japan's Ryuku Islands. I wish the people who will observe the eclipse there good luck; the rolling seas will doubtless play havoc with their observation.

As such, we here at Shanghai will have the best seats in the house. Hahaha. Sorry for that bit of bragging over there - I'm really psyched for tomorrow's big event. I can't wait to see Bailey's beads, the diamond ring effect, and the sun's corona. This will be the best and longest eclipse for the next one hundred years and I want to enjoy every moment of it.

However, the latest weather forecasts for Shanghai show thunderstorms and cloudy skies starting tonight until tomorrow. The last solar eclipse expedition of UP AstroSoc, this one to Tawi-tawi in the southern Philippines, was also mired by cloudy skies on the day of the eclipse itself. I hope that history doesn't repeat itself. Let's all hope and pray for clear skies over Shanghai and Jinshanwei tomorrow.

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