Starship Asterisk*

A Hybrid Solar Eclipse over Kenya

Explanation: Chasing solar eclipses can cause you to go to the most interesting places and meet the most interesting people. Almost. For example, chasing this eclipse brought this astrophotographer to Kenya in 2013. His contact, a member of the Maasai people, was to pick him up at the airport, show him part of southern Kenya, and even agreed to pose in traditional warrior garb on a hill as the hopefully spectacular eclipse set far in background. Unfortunately, this contact person died unexpectedly a week before the astrophotographer's arrival, and so he never got to participate in the shoot, nor know that the resulting image went on to win an international award for astrophotography. Pictured in 2013 from Kenya, the Moon covers much of the Sun during a hybrid eclipse, a rare type of solar eclipse that appears as total from some Earth locations, but annular in others. During the annular part of the eclipse, the Moon was too far from the Earth to block the entire Sun. Next month a total solar eclipse will cross the USA.

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A Great image... and I hope to get a good shot of the eclipse here in Good ol' Salem, Oregon...and get it up in the Cafe...

New Celestron Evolution 6" is pretty interesting, did some testing tonight. I have a solar filter, but don't know if I will use the scope. Definitely will use camcorder...

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I love it! I looked at the picture, ... and saw the spear, and I glanced across my living room to an identical spear that I purchased from an African in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loiyangalani , Kenya on an eclipse expedition so many years ago...

A great image, but I don't understand the caption. The caption states that the person being photographed in front of the eclipsed sun died a week before the eclipse he was photographed in front of. What am I missing here?

geoffrey.landis wrote:
The caption states that the person being photographed in front of the eclipsed sun died
a week before the eclipse he was photographed in front of. What am I missing here?

Presumably this was a stand in.

(My young granddaughter Maeve is 1.9% Maasi and will be observing the upcoming eclipse in North Carolina... but this isn't her.)

geoffrey.landis wrote:A great image, but I don't understand the caption. The caption states that the person being photographed in front of the eclipsed sun died a week before the eclipse he was photographed in front of. What am I missing here?

I'm going to take a wild leap into the unknown, and posit that the person in the picture is not the person that was supposed to pose for the photographer, but someone else.

Rob

rstevenson wrote:

geoffrey.landis wrote:A great image, but I don't understand the caption. The caption states that the person being photographed in front of the eclipsed sun died a week before the eclipse he was photographed in front of. What am I missing here?

I'm going to take a wild leap into the unknown, and posit that the person in the picture is not the person that was supposed to pose for the photographer, but someone else.

Rob

This Apod text got me visiting here to look at the English version as I assumed that the Spanish at Observatorio had mistranslated it!
The only suggestion I've got, other than Rob's daring intuitive leap, is that time travel must have been involved.

I don't think it was so easy that the photographer got a second Massai warrior a week before the eclipse. I think the photographer got special permission from the funeral house, and he got a mannequin stand from a department store. An hour before the eclipse the photographer propped the corpse up on the mannequin stand tied the spear to his hand with wire and then went and set up his camera. That's why the contact didn't see to participate, he was a corpse.

geoffrey.landis wrote:A great image, but I don't understand the caption. The caption states that the person being photographed in front of the eclipsed sun died a week before the eclipse he was photographed in front of. What am I missing here?

LOL. Of course they stood him up using the bush there.

Seriously, the caption also says he did not participate in the shoot, so it was another Masai warrior. Do not think that you can kill one of them and win the battle. Another mighty warrior will come and take his place and spear you dead.

I really am impressed with this photograph. I often lack vision and my main thought would have been "Darn it, the eclipse is not going to be quite total here. Nobody is going to like my picture, so never mind." But Eugen Kamenew is a much better photographer than I am. The scene he created is exquisite and dramatic.

neufer wrote: Presumably this was a stand in.

Yes, this is my understanding from an email exchange with the astrophotographer.

Image very interesting

Stand-in, mannequin, time traveler, Massai Spirit, or whatever . . . this is a great shot!