Letztes Update: 04.01.2011

In 1991 i saw “The Big One” in Mexiko on the Baja California. 6 minutes and 54 seconds are the longest totality i can experience in my life. And i was warned that eclipses can be addictive....

And this is what happened, i became addicted.

So it was clear to me that i had to see the successor in the Saros cycle, the eclipse of July 22nd 2009.

The short version of the trip was described in a cartoon we found in a newspaper on July 23rd:

The chances to see the eclipse were so-so, but we tried...

But let me tell the story from the beginning:

We (Martin, Susanne and me) met in China in 2008 during our trip to see the eclipse on August 1st in the desert Gobi. We decided that we should see the next one as well. So we booked a 4-day trip in the beginning of 2009, destination Shanghai.

So we left Germany on July 18th, flying over night to Shanghai. On Shanghai airport we met Silvia, another veteran eclipse chaser. With the Maglev, the one and only German Transrapid, we drove downtown with a thrilling speed of 431 km/h. Weather in Shanghai was nice so we could explore the city and the skyline. First evening we had a very nice all-you-can-eat-and-drink dinner at a Japanese restaurant. I love Sushi!

In the hotel lobby of the “Holiday Inn Downtown” we ran into several people we met last year on our trip to China. If you chase the moons shadow this will happen more often than you expect...

On the next day we had nice sightseeing, weather was very good with clear and transparent air. I never experienced Shanghai with such a clear air before.

The skyscrapers of Shanghai seem to be very large if you see them without comparison.

But if you get closer you can see they are not as tall as you thought.

If you look from another perspective they even seem to be tiny!

From the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center you can detect scenic views that you do not expect.

And after you did what you wanted to do you can clean everything.

The streets of Shanghai are a little bit confusing.

In the evening we met some friends from Spain and Germany, and we had dinner in the “Paulaner Brauhaus” with genuine German food and beer.

After this nice day in Shanghai we moved onwards to our hotel in Jinshanwei, the “Sino Bay Ramada Inn”, very nice 5-star-hotel in the industry area. Here we were hoping to have clear skies, but the weather was becoming worse from hour to hour. We were checking the weather forecasts on the internet, but there was no clear indication where we should go, so we stayed being in close contact with Hartwig Lüthen in Germany, who tried to figure out trends in the weather behaviour and to direct us. Forecast for Shanghai downtown was also very poor, and moving several 100 km to the west was not too promising either. So we waited....

Dinner was organized in another hotel, where we met Jörg Schoppmeyer and Nicole, whom we met during last years round trip. We had a very nice evening as well.

On the next morning we again checked the weather forecast, but there was no clear indication where to go, so we stayed on the hotel ground and set up our stuff.

“our stuff” was a SP mount, a Pentax SDHF75, a Williams Megrez72 and a 300 mm telephoto lens. The design of the counterweights for sure made us famous among some Chinese workers, we took 6 water bottles and filled them with sand that we took from a construction area. The workers were laughing a lot as we asked if we can take some sand and started to fill it into the bottles.

The sky was completely cloudy, so we were not too optimistic, but stil laughing.

Image: Jan Sundstrom, Sweden

5 minutes before totality the first rain drops came down, but we stayed!

The best image of the partial phase is this one:

Time ran on, and then totality began. We could not see anything of the totality, just clouds. As you can see, there are some blueish spots in the sky, if clouds might have moved a little bit faster we might have been lucky...

Image: Susanne Büter, Germany

But we were not....

Even worse, about 5 minutes after totality very heavy rain started, and we hurried to save our equipment. The “Icap”, a notebook shelter i bought for the trip, saved my computer. Extremely useful part of equipment!!!

two images: Jan Sundstrom, Sweden

But, happy to say, everything arrived in the lobby without damage, only operators were soaking wet. :-) and dripping, the cleaning staff of the hotel was terified and immediately wiping away all the water we left under us.

Image: Martin Junius, Germany

The rest of the story is short: drying the equipment, putting everything back into the suitcases and after one more night in China we started our flight home to Frankfurt.

Reports on the internet showed that only few people were lucky with the weather, only few clear images were posted from China.

But, after the eclipse is before the eclipse, so now we are looking forward to Australia 2012!!

[Mushardt] [Deutsche Version] [English Version] [About me...] [Tenerife] [ATM things] [Eclipses] [Impressum + Disclaimer]