Oh, it’s almost there, it’s almost there!
Ooooh!
This has to be one of the most phenomenal, astronomical events that you can see with
your naked eye. I mean, I’m just looking at the sun
right now. Ohh, it got a little bit brighter around the edge.
MUSIC
Well we are here at the University of Nottingham, in
Nottingham, but we are getting ready to jump on a
couple of planes to go to China so that we can still be at
the University of Nottingham.
Well there happens to be a total solar eclipse that’s
happening in just a little over a day, and it passes, the
path of totality, passes right over the University of
Nottingham in Ningbo, China. At the moment it looks
like it is going to be cloudy, so I am really, really hoping
that the clouds are not with us.
Give us a smile
LAUGHS Hello!
AIRPORT ANNOUNCEMENT MUSIC
The forecast looks very grim. It seems that there is a
front moving in tomorrow morning…it doesn’t look good.
MUSIC
So here we are in China at the University of Nottingham,
Ningbo Campus. We finally arrived. And so we are
anticipating this big solar eclipse tomorrow, while we
are watching occasional lightning bolts. Quite on cue,
right there. They just cover the entire half of the sky, in
the direction where the sun is actually supposed to rise
tomorrow morning, where we are going to see this
fantastic astronomical event. Maybe! So I am still
keeping my hopes up but, I am not positive that we are
actually going to be able to see it. MUSIC
We have been travelling for two days, two and a half, I
forget what day it is at the moment, but I know that
tomorrow morning at 9:37 am local time… LAUGHS
is when the big event happens. MUSIC
Well its 4:54am and we just came out to see what the
sky looks like and to see what the potential is for the
solar eclipse this morning and it doesn’t look very good.
Not very promising indeed.
BIRD CHIRPS
Beautiful, but not good for a sun … for a solar event
MUSIC
We went out for the sunrise this morning and the
weather did not look terribly fantastic but after a little
break and a cup of tea we came back out again to see
the clouds not quite so thick and we can actually see the
sun up there, so what I have right here is my very own
solar filter that I made. This is a roll of black and white
film. Now it has to be actually black and white and not
the colour film that they just develop black and white
but real black and white film. So you expose it to the
sun and then you send it off to be developed and then it
has this nice layer of sliver on there that acts as a filter
for the ultra violet and the infra red that’s the most
damage… most harmful for your eyes. But we have a
good chance of actually getting a solar eclipse. Ok, now
I am really excited! LAUGHS
Yeah! In ten maybe! Ten minutes! MAN REPLIES IN CHINESE
Ten minutes it will cover! MUSIC
So we have just reached the first contact point and
that’s when the edge of the moon first touches the edge
of the sun, so it is now just starting to pass in front of it.
We have about an hour now until the total eclipse phase
starts. So it’s the sun, moon and earth in a straight line.
The moon actually covers the sun. Well it might seem
slow, it takes the moon a while to cover the sun
completely but actually the shadow of the moon is
barrelling across the surface of the earth at about 2,000
miles per hour. I am fascinated by the idea of what
ancient people thought when the sun just completely went away. There are different stories about
how they reacted. The ancient Chinese in fact, thought
that dragons were attacking the sun and they were
going to eat it and take it away so what they decided
to do was just to make noise, beat drums, scream, make
as much noise as they could to get rid of the moon
and to keep the sun and so luckily every time that actually
happened and they got the sun back.
LAUGHS MAN SPEAKS IN CHINESE
Well people have just decided to gather to watch, they
have been using some of our solar eclipse glasses and
the kids are playing with feathers, they don’t really know
what’s going on. They think the sun looks like the
crescent moon, or they keep saying “I see the crescent
moon”. Because the moon is actually covering the sun.
Yeah. MAN SPEAKS IN CHINESE
So normally when the sun goes down the animals start
to go back to their burrows and go to sleep and so right
now they start to, they look like they are. The birds are
kind of going away. There are small little floaty things
that are leaving and the ducks just started to go hide in
the trees, but a couple of kids went and yelled at them
so they did not really know what to do. LAUGHS
Oh it’s fantastic.
Oh, it’s almost there, it’s almost there!
Ooohh! Wow! LAUGHS
Oh my gosh!
LAUGHS Oh my gosh. This has to be one of the coolest
things I have ever seen. You can see the corona glowing
around the sun and the temperature just dropped completely
and everyone started cheering LAUGHS
It’s amazing!
I completely didn’t think we were going to be able to see
it like that. Fireworks are going off LAUGHS
You could see a little bit of red at the very edge where
the …. where we could see the last bit of light. It’s
amazingly dark. When I look through my binoculars I
can actually see some of the outer ring, some of the
corona sort of flickering and I don’t think that is entirely
due to the clouds. I actually think that has to do with the
light coming out.
Oh man, that is the coolest, coolest!
I mean can you imagine, even thousands of years ago
seeing something like this and having any idea what was
going on. You can hear people yelling in the distance,
screaming and cheering.
LAUGHS Oh my gosh! If we could actually see, if there
weren’t any clouds. Oh we can, there’s Venus. Hey
there’s Venus!
So we can see the planet Venus right there really bright.
And if we could see the clouds around the sun we would
be able to see Mercury. Yeah! This is amazing, this is
amazing! The clouds are coming in a little bit more now
so you can’t see it quite as well but…
How does this rate on your astronomy experiences?
I mean, even with the clouds this has to be one of the
most phenomenal astronomical events that you can see
with your naked eye. I mean I’m just looking at the sun
right now. Ohh it got a little bit brighter around the
edge.
Ohh! And it just doesn’t happen very often in each spot
on the earth.
Oh my gosh!
It just popped back out! That was a quick four minutes I
have to tell ya! LAUGHS
So the sun just popped back out on the other side of the
moon so it is brighter again instantly so I am wrapping a
foil around our camera so we can actually look at it
again and now I have to use these.
The next total solar eclipse will be in about one year
from now, its July 11th, 2010 and it will go past, it will
go over Easter Island and Chile and some of Argentina,
so I have to figure out a good reason to go down there.
LAUGHS
So, a University of Nottingham campus, Easter Island
maybe?
We are just sitting here glowing with the enjoyment of
what we just saw! It’s amazing, that four and a half
minutes went so quickly! Wow!