Wandering Around Looking Up Cameron Hummels' Notes on Science and Travel

Solar Eclipse Tomorrow!

I’ll make this short, since I’m on a borrowed computer.

Erika and I flew for 14 hours from Newark, New Jersey to Shanghai, China on a direct flight. It actually took us over Northern Canada near the North Pole! Fortunately (or unfortunately, I suppose), I had so much work to do prior to my departure that I didn’t get any sleep the night before our 11AM flight, and I was able to sleep 6 hours on the plane. Now I’m hardly jet lagged at all, which is a stunt considering it is a 12-hour shift off of East Coast time.

Initially we were fearful of being quarantined by the Chinese authorities upon our arrival in Shanghai. Recently they’ve been checking the temperature of all incoming passengers on planes to identify flu-infected people and prevent them from spreading it to China. Fortunately, they didn’t check temperatures of people on our plane, having stopped with the practice the previous day. I’d hate to miss part of the trip stuck in a Chinese hospital-prison.

First impressions on Shanghai and China. It isn’t as shocking as I expected. It is crowded, hot, and humid, but the environment is reminiscent of Los Angeles in terms of the greenery and climate. We didn’t spend any time in Shanghai, as we immediately left for Hangzhou a couple of hours drive to the southwest. We stayed there the night of the 20th and immediately left for a remote location in the mountains west of Hangzhou to observe the total solar eclipse occurring tomorrow.

You see, we were lucky enough to contact Dr. Jay Pasachoff, a leading solar astronomer, who is performing several research observations from this location in Southern China during the eclipse. The path of the total eclipse will travel from Northern India across Southern China and out into the Western Pacific Ocean on the morning of Wednesday, July 22nd. He was generous enough to invite us to join his research team in witnessing what many people consider to be the most sublime astronomical event visible on Earth.

I’ve taken loads of pictures from this site already, but I cannot access the photos yet, but Erika snapped this one with her iPhone. it should give you an idea of all of the observing equipment set up here, more telescopes and cameras that I’ve ever seen in a single place! Erika and I are very excited, but we’ll see if the weather holds for the observing tomorrow. It seems the forecast is calling for clouds, so we’ll just have to cross our fingers!