Shanghai, Total Solar Eclipse 2009

Just an update on my once in a lifetime trip to China to view live and in person the Total Solar Eclipse July 22 2009. A lot has transpired since I started my countdown to China a while back. First off, I now have a passport, what can I say, I don't....... or rather they don't let me out that often. Apparently you need passports to leave your home country, I've only heard speak of them before, now I have one.

To get one I first had to get a birth certificate, well I had one but under "Name" it had "Baby Boy". Plus I have gotten all my shots, I have over come my fear of needles to get all kinds of shots to protect me from God knows what, I spent over an hour listening to the travel agency nurse informing me of all the things I could get and how not to get them, turning white and getting faint as she's talking, and invariably it always happens, the statement,"Are you going to be okay, would you like a glass of water?" I hate talking about diseases, I always develop the symptoms when talking about them. I sent my passport away with my China visa application and I'm just waiting for the actual visa and passport to return, then I'm good to go.


I have done a lot of research about the weather stats over in Shanghai using sites such as NASA's Eclipse Web Site, It would kind of be sad if I went through what I went through spent what I spent to only have it cloudy the day of the eclipse, mind you a trip to China is okay cool to fall back on, so rich in history and lots to see. Shanghai is actually one of the better places to be during the eclipse. The image above shows it has the lowest average cloud cover of the sites in the eclipse's path. So here's the plan, I have found out that the Hotel... nay... Resort I will be staying at has Internet access, so I am planing , if all goes well, from the Hotel terrace...la de da, to use USTREAM to broadcast live from my blog, the actual Eclipse Event!!!!!! The Total Solar Eclipse starts at 9:32 am July 22, you can find what the time is in your location by using this converter, it works out to be 9:32 pm EDT July 21.


One last thing, as part of their International Year of Astronomy 2009 celebrations, KW Telescope is having a "Photographic Celebration Of the Night sky" where they display images taken by astrophotographers from across Canada, two of mine were selected to be on display for the event, my Nuclear Moon image above and my Double Halo with Circumzenithal Arc, image below, thought it was cool to have my work half way across the country being displayed with the best, very honored.


I'll leave you now with an animation of my Nuclear Moon.