Total Solar Eclipse

WE SAW IT!!!!!!

The weather has been hazy since we arrived in Xian (China) so I was not exactly holding out a lot of hope. We had Cherry's nephew with us (Chinese person) so he had a look on the internet and found that the best place to see the eclipse was in a park to the north of Xian. When we got there about 2pm the weather was still very cloudy indeed. It is a particular problem in these parts because the eclipse wasn't until 7.15pm when the sun is very low in the sky, so atmospheric conditions are even more difficult.

Lo and behold at 4pm the clouds parted and we had a clear blue sky to the horizon!!! First contact of the moon was at 6.27pm where it just started to nibble at the sun and it continued across the face.

I had the eclipse glasses which I ordered from a website in the UK before I left but there were loads of Chinese people who had made their own arrangements - one was looking through the negative of what looked like a brain scan(!)

The sun was setting by now (it's only 4 degrees above the horizon at eclipse time) but just before the treeline it reached totality and by 7.10pm there was hardly anything of the sun left, just looked like a street lamp hanging in the sky while it got darker and darker.

Then finally at 7.15pm we saw the whole of the sun covered by the moon and the sun's corona. We were only into the eclipse area by the skin of our teeth, so totality only lasted about 10 seconds, but what a 10 seconds, as they say. Fantastic! Then the diamond ring came into view as the moon moved off, and about 5 minutes later the sun had set.

Coming home there were thousands of people so it took ages to get a taxi. Two days ago I thought the people walking at the side of the road as the cars sped past were mental - now I am one of them!

Xiao Shuang (Cherry's nephew) has been telling us about sights around China and how they are rated as 5 star for the best, 4 star, 3 star etc. I said to him, "So, do you rate the solar eclipse as 5 star?" He thought for a while and then said, "Maybe six or even seven star!"