Starship Asterisk*

• He advanced to the council-table:
  And, ``Please your honours,'' said he, ``I'm able,
  ``By means of a secret charm, to draw
  ``All creatures living beneath the sun,
  ``That creep or swim or fly or run,
  ``After me so as you never saw!
  ``And I chiefly use my charm
  ``On creatures that do people harm,
  ``The mole and toad and newt and viper;
  ``And people call me the Pied Piper.''

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_July_22,_2009 wrote:
<<The solar eclipse of July 22, 2009 was the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, lasting as much as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in some places. It caused tourist interest in eastern China, Nepal and India.



The eclipse was part of Saros series 136, as was the record-setting solar eclipse of July 11, 1991. The next event from this series will be on August 2, 2027. The exceptional duration was a result of the Moon being near perigee, with the apparent diameter of the Moon 8% larger than the Sun (magnitude 1.080) and the Earth being near aphelion where the Sun appeared slightly smaller.

Totality was visible in many large cities, including Surat, Vadodara, Bhopal, Varanasi, Patna, Gaya, Dinajpur, Siliguri, Tawang, Guwahati, Chengdu, Nanchong, Chongqing, Yichang, Jingzhou, Wuhan, Huanggang, Hefei, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Huzhou, Suzhou, Jiaxing, Ningbo and Shanghai, as well as over the Three Gorges Dam.>>

• --------------------------------------------------------
  Solar eclipse shrouds Asia in daytime darkness
  By ERIC TALMADGE (AP) – 46 minutes ago
  
  <<TOKYO, Japan — Millions of Asians turned their eyes skyward Wednesday as dawn suddenly turned to darkness across the continent in the longest total solar eclipse this century will see. Millions of others, fearing a bad omen, shuttered themselves indoors. Chinese launched fireworks and danced in Shanghai. On a remote Japanese island, bewildered cattle went to their feeding troughs thinking night had fallen. And in India, a woman was crushed as thousands of viewers crowded the banks of the Ganges for a glimpse.
  
  Starting off in India just after dawn, the eclipse was visible across a wide swath of Asia before moving over southern Japan and then off into the Pacific Ocean. In some parts of Asia, it lasted as long as 6 minutes and 39 seconds. The eclipse is the longest since July 11, 1991, when a total eclipse lasting 6 minutes, 53 seconds was visible from Hawaii to South America. There will not be a longer eclipse than Wednesday's until 2132.
  
  The celestial event was met by a mixture of awe, excitement and fear. Cloudy skies and rain damped the show in many areas, but villagers in the town of Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges in India, got one of the best views.
  
  Thousands of Hindus took to the waters to cleanse their sins. The eclipse was seen there for 3 minutes and 48 seconds. The gathering was marred when a 65-year-old woman was killed and six people injured in a stampede at one of the river's banks where about 2,500 people had gathered, said police spokesman Surendra Srivastava. He said it is not clear how the stampede started.
  
  Others in India, though, were gripped by fear and refused to come outdoors. In Hindu mythology, an eclipse is caused when a dragon-demon swallows the sun, while another myth is that sun rays during an eclipse can harm unborn children. "My mother and aunts have called and told me stay in a darkened room with the curtains closed, lie in bed and chant prayers," Krati Jain, 24, who is expecting her first child, said in New Delhi. Clouds obscured the sun when the eclipse began. But they parted in several Indian cities minutes before the total eclipse took place at 6:24 a.m. (0054 GMT; 8:54 p.m. EDT).
  
  On the tiny Japanese island of Akuseki, where the total eclipse lasted 6 minutes and 25 seconds, more than 200 tourists had to take shelter inside a school gymnasium due to a tornado warning. But when the sky started to darken, everyone rushed out to the schoolyard, cheering and applauding, said island official Seiichiro Fukumitsu. "The sky turned dark like in the dead of the night. The air turned cooler and cicadas stopped singing. Everything was so exciting and moving," Fukumitsu said. Some villagers reported that their cows gathered at a feeding station, apparently mistaking the eclipse as a signal that it was dinner time, he said. "It was rather mysterious," he said. "It must have been a frightening experience for people hundreds of years ago."
  
  Jubilant eclipse watchers in China set off fireworks near the banks of the Qiantang River in coastal Zheijiang province as skies darkened overhead for about six minutes. Visitors from countries including Britain, Germany and Australia joined curious Chinese onlookers. Heavy clouds blocked the full eclipse but watchers saw a partial one.
  
  The river bank in Yanguan village drew an exceptional number of watchers because it was also the site of the world's largest tidal bore, a phenomenon triggered by the eclipse where a giant tidal wave runs against the river's currents.
  
  In Beijing, a thick blanket of grayish smog blotted out the sky.
  
  In coastal Shanghai, eclipse watchers were disappointed by a light drizzle in the morning. As the sky darkened fully for about five minutes, however, watchers became excited. Holding a big green umbrella and wearing special glasses, Song Chunyun was prepared to celebrate the occasion in a new white dress.
  
  "Although the rain came, I don't want to screw up the mood. I want to enjoy the special day," she said before dancing and singing in the rain with her two sisters.
  
  At a Buddhist temple in the Thai capital Bangkok, dozens of monks led a mass prayer at a Buddhist temple to ward off evil. "The eclipse is bad omen for the country," said Pinyo Pongjaroen, a prominent astrologer. "We are praying to boost the fortune of the country."
  
  In Myanmar, Buddhists went to Yangon's famed Shwedagon pagoda to offer flowers, fruits and water to ward off misfortune. Some warned their friends and family not to sleep through the eclipse for fear of getting bad luck. "We all got up early this morning and prayed at home because our abbot told us that the solar eclipse is a bad omen," said a 43-year old school teacher Aye Aye Thein.
  
  Bangladeshis also came out in droves. "It's a rare moment, I never thought I would see this in my life," said Abdullah Sayeed, a college student who traveled to Panchagarh town from the capital, Dhaka. He said cars in the town needed to use headlights as "night darkness has fallen suddenly." People hugged each other and some blew whistles when the eclipse began.>>
  --------------------------------------------------------

Vivian wrote:Wonderful!!
I am in Shanghai, and you?
Though it was cloudy this morning, I still saw the total solar eclipse for a some minutes.
When the moon covered the sun, the sky blackened.
It's a pity that the picture I took is not really clearly...
But I am sure I will remenber today forever.

http://www.astrospace.co.uk/gallery/Eclipses/eclipse06.html wrote:
29 March 2006 Solar Minimum eclipse over Turkey
...................................................................


The Inner Corona taken with a short exposure, note the activity
is mainly East/West with the North and South areas of the Sun
fairly quiet - just what you'd expect during Solar Minimum.
...................................................................


A longer exposure brings out the Outer Corona with several
streamers and in the solar polar regions the magnetic field
can be seen. Image taken at 13:57 just before Totality ends.
...................................................................


Much longer exposure bringing out the streamers and outer corona
seconds before 3rd contact. Note I have tried to correctly
orientate the majority of the images to be consistent
hence the dark bands either side of the image.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/23/stories/2009072356441700.htm wrote:
_Longest solar eclipse in China since 1814_ by Ananth Krishnan

The total solar eclipse seen in Chongqing , China, on Wednesday.


<<BEIJING: It was supposed to be the day the giant Kua Fu chased the Sun across the sky,
determined to capture the fiery orange ball to end a long drought that had plagued the country.


But on Wednesday morning, the mythic giant beloved by Chinese folklore was nowhere to be found. Instead, thousands of Beijing residents who rose early to catch a glimpse of the longest solar eclipse of this century disappointingly woke to a familiar sight: a dull, smog-filled sky stretching over one of China’s most polluted cities.

But millions of others across China were far luckier. From Chengdu in the heart of the country’s Sichuan province to Shanghai on the eastern coast, much of China was thrown into darkness on Wednesday morning.

Thousands of eclipse-watchers from all over the world gathered at some of China’s most well-known sites to watch the longest solar eclipse to be seen in China since 1814. In Sichuan province, a local airline even chartered flights for passengers to follow the sun. In Zhejiang in China’s east, regarded by Chinese astronomers as the best spot in the country to watch the event, thousands gathered and burst crackers.

In China, solar eclipses are regarded as a sign of impending catastrophe. For Beijing’s residents, the only catastrophe was the smog-filled morning sky the city woke up to. Several hundred people gathered at the city’s planetarium to watch the eclipse, but all they saw was a sight this city’s residents are by now well used to: a dull grey sky that menacingly stretched across the city.

Unfortunately for the s residents, Wednesday turned out to be one of the most polluted days of the year so far. According to Beijing Air, a monitoring service run by the U.S. embassy, the Air Quality Index(AQI) on Wednesday morning was as high as 469 according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s scale, 500 is the worst possible reading on the AQI scale. Beijing Air described Wednesday morning’s air conditions as “hazardous.”

Shanghai's residents were luckier. Thousands gathered at Yangshan Island off Shanghai’s coast, at the site of one of the largest deep-sea ports, for one of the best views of the eclipse on the mainland. “There was a drizzle in the morning so we were concerned, but by 9 a.m. the view was spectacular, possibly the best in China,” Ja Mingjie, 23, who watched the eclipse at Yangshan among thousands of foreign tourists, said.

But behind the noxious smog-filled clouds that hovered over Beijing on Wednesday was a silver lining. After all, behind the blue skies the city has become used to in recent months after the Olympic Games was a sobering cause, the shutting down of more than 1,000,000 factories after the financial crisis hit China. The return of the much-hated smog to Beijing, analysts say, is a sign that many of the factories around Beijing have left the recession far behind and are now back up and running, bellowing out as much smoke and ash into the city’s skies as they were before the recession briefly disrupted Chinas good times.>>

neufer wrote:determined to capture the fiery orange ball to end a long drought that had plagued the country.

mark swain wrote:

neufer wrote:determined to capture the fiery orange ball
to end a long drought that had plagued the country.

Bulls eye...TTFN

Indigo_Sunrise wrote: Congratulations on travelling to China (unless of course, you live there) to view the eclipse. I'm sure it was impressive! Too bad your image did not come out well enough to share.
*Sometimes I think I live in the wrong hemisphere(s), since next year will make the third eclipse in as many years for that part (China, India, South Pacific) of the world. North America has to wait until 2017..... It's something to look forward to, anyway! 8)