Total Solar Eclipse, 1st August 2008

The total eclipse of 2008 was visible in an arc which began in Canada and extended across northern Greenland, the Arctic, central Russia and Mongolia, finally ending in China. Not an easy one to get a good view of, therefore! The maximum eclipse duration was 2mins 27sec but this was in northern Siberia where the sky was likely to be overcast. I was situated at the yellow spot on the map, in the foothills of the Altai Mountains near to the town of Chemal in southern Siberia, as this seemed like a good tradeoff between accessibility, duration of eclipse and probability of clear skies. Strangely, the latitude of this location is almost the same as at home (52deg North) but the longitude is rather different - a quarter of the way round the world, in fact!

The detailed arrangements for viewing the eclipse were extremely vague. We weren't even staying in the advertised place and the only information our tour guide had was a latitude and longitude which, although on the centre-line, actually corresponded to a spot in the middle of a village! A suggestion that we view from the river adjacent to the camp-site was clearly ridiculous as the beach faced the wrong way and was not exactly a convenient place to set up camera tripods. Add to all this the fact that the only road ran along a heavily-wooded valley and the problems we were facing became apparent! Thus, the day before the eclipse I (as the most experienced "shadow chaser"), the tour guide and the local guide had to do a rapid reconnaisance of a large area between our camp-site and Chemal to find a suitable viewing spot. We found a few possibles, but the problem of finding a clear sightline in an accessible but secluded spot was considerable.

Eclipse day dawned clear and bright so hopes were high as we unpacked our equipment. It was at this point I found that my 600mm mirror lens had been damaged in transit somewhere, seemingly irreparably. I did have a 300mm zoom as a Plan B, but the omens were worsening. We did a bit of sight-seeing in the morning sun but over lunch cloud began to gather ominously over the hills. We drove to the selected site but then decided to move to another slightly further north as the cloud cover lessened in that direction. This was helped by a brisk wind moving the clouds along so equipment was carried out of the bus and assembled.

By 1st contact the sun was in an extensive area of clear blue sky so shutters clicked hopefully! Unfortunately, the wind changed direction soon after so large cloud-banks drifted in from the south. This resulted in almost continuous cover by the half-hour mark with only brief glimpses of the decreasing crescent (see picture below). A gap in the cloud at one time looked hopeful but drifted past the sun with over 2mins to go before totality. The upshot was that, although the shadow washed over us in the usual dramatic fashion, we didn't see anything of totality at all. The best that it got was a glimpse of the final Diamond Ring but, as the picture to bottom right shows, that wasn't exactly dramatic!

Due to the cloud, the only photographs I took were just of the early partial phase: the others on this page were contributed by a fellow traveller - thanks Noel! I did miss a trick by not running a video of the general scene through totality, to show the shadow approaching from the north-west, the darkness of totality and then the sudden return of the light but the emotions of annoyance and frustration I was feeling at the time seemed to drive out logical thought. Those for whom this was their first eclipse experience enjoyed the events greatly but those of us who had been hoping for good photographs left the site feeling very disappointed.

There was the odd report of someone seeing totality in a nearby town through a fortunate gap in the clouds but on the whole no-one saw anything - including those back at our campsite, we were relieved to hear! We later found out that conditions further to the north (well away from the Altai Mountains) had been very good, with several reports of excellent views of totality from the city of Barnaul. This, and observations of cloud cover when we travelled back to Barnaul for our flight to Moscow, convinced us that our assigned viewing area had been chosen rather more for its other touristic attractions than for its atmospheric conditions. It seems that Barnaul, though something of a cultural desert, usually has clear sunny skies at this time of the year whereas the Altai does tend to be cloudy (as one might expect from a hilly, wooded area). Letters of complaint were thus sent and some monetary compensation was subsequently received, but frankly I'd have preferred to see the eclipse!

When comparing notes with others in the party on arriving home, I found that a video had been taken of the event so I arranged that this be converted from HD format (very large filesize!) and sent to me for editing down. I produced an AVI file initially, and the results of my efforts can be seen by clicking here. I later re-processed this file to produce a Windows Media (WMV) version, as support for the compressor I used for the original version (Intel Indeo 5.04) is now not universal. To view this version, click here. Despite having a small frame size, both versions are quite large (almost 7.5Mbytes for the AVI, 4.2Mbytes for the WMV) but it's probably worth the wait: try watching at the "double size" setting of your viewer. The rapid "lights out" effect on entering totality is quite dramatic, as is just how dark it is under the shadow: the lights of cars in the valley are particularly striking. The duration of totality is accurately recorded, as I didn't edit this sequence at all. Thanks to Steve Ehler for the original footage.

To compensate for the lack of actual eclipse pictures I constructed a "mini-site" showing the various places we visited in Moscow. To view it, click here - it will open in a new window. To return to this page, close the new window.