{"id":43,"date":"2009-07-21T10:57:11","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T10:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/2009\/07\/of-eclipses-giant-leaps.html"},"modified":"2012-11-27T15:52:25","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T15:52:25","slug":"of_eclipses_giant_leaps_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/2009\/07\/of_eclipses_giant_leaps_1.html","title":{"rendered":"Of eclipses and giant leaps"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week belongs to the heavens \u2014 the Sun and the Moon, to be precise!<\/p>\n

The world is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on moon (I loved this NASA<\/span>-Google <\/a>virtual exploration thing). Though India struggled with a technical glitch in the Chandrayaan mission, it wasn\u2019t such bad news after all as ISRO<\/span> claimed to have achieved all misiion objectives by April 2009, when the onboard star sensor used for determining the orientation of the spacecraft started malfunctioning. To overcome this anomaly, ISRO<\/span> used redundant sensors \u2013 gyroscopes \u2013 along with antenna pointing information and images of specific location on the surface of the moon, for determining the orientation of the spacecraft. \u201cAll primary mission objectives of Chandrayaan-1 have been successfully realised during the eight months of its operation. The spacecraft continues to send high quality data as per planned sequence to its ground station at Byalalu near Bangalore,\u201d an ISRO<\/span> statement said.<\/p>\n

And now, I can\u2019t but admire the science popularisation centres in India for having created such unprecedented interest in the \u2018solar eclipse of the century\u2019. It helps that the best place to see the longest solar eclipse of our lives is a small hamlet<\/a> in the Indian state of Bihar. Also helps that the media has put together a multi-hued coverage (1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>) in the run up to the rare cosmic event, stoking our collective apetitie for the real thing!<\/p>\n

Like earlier heavenly events<\/a>, Nature India will host pictures of the solar eclipse on this blog.<\/p>\n

The first picture we received this time from amateur astronomer Madhur Patel sums up the spirit of the week. \u201cThis photo might not be of an eclipse but it is one of my best till date. It was taken during the \u2018Bombay Air Sappers Show\u2019 held in Pune in January, 2008. See how the paraglider eclipses the early morning sun. With the birds in the background, it represents the undying spirit of a man to fly\u201d, Madhur says.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s soak in the optimistic goodness of this thought as we wait for the action to begin and the pictures to trickle in! Send us your pictures of the real event (subhrapr@gmail.com) and we will put up the best here.<\/p>\n

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And now it has happened, finally \u2014 the sun\u2019s 3 minutes of fame. What if it came with fancy flights, nasty stampedes<\/a> and a dampener for the thousands who thronged Taregana.<\/a><\/p>\n

From among the first eclipse pictures we got today, here\u2019s a neat one from Kolkata. Ace photographer Ian Umeda clicked this from his rooftoop on the Eastern Metropolitan bypass. He and wife Maureen woke up at five in the morning to catch the feast. They spent an hour and a half watching and photographing the sun, moon and clouds play hide-and-seek and came back for a deservedly satisfied snooze. The couple says, \u201cIt was cloudy. No sun to be seen. But after around 5.40 a.m., the clouds parted a bit to reveal a weak, sickle-shaped sun. The glimpse lasted perhaps 30 seconds before thick clouds obscured the view again. An early morning well spent.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s a picture taken from the \u2018Chausatti ghat\u2019 on river Ganga in Varanasi. \u201cWe could see the diamond ring both times,\u201d says Upendra Deglurkar, who took the shot. The picture shows the total eclipse and corona of the sun over a still river.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Over the weekend, we received some brilliant video footage shot by Anurag Chaurasia, a biotechnologist at ICAR\u2019s National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms (NBAIM<\/span>) in Mau, Uttar Pradesh. Anurag shot the celestial show at the Bhadaini Ghat of Varanasi. Here\u2019s a combination picture grabbed from the video showing the various phases of the eclipse (clockwise). <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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We got video grabs from a unique balloon experiment conducted by the Indian Centre for Space Physics (ICSP<\/span>) in Kolkata. The balloons flew from Raiganj district of West Bengal to Madhepur district of Bihar, a distance of about 200 km. They were tracked by GPS<\/span>. The balloons carried cameras recording the horizon that looked as if the sun was setting during the eclipse. They captured very uncommon colours of the cloud due to diffraction effect of the sunlight by the moon as also the total eclipse in the background of a dark sky. \u201cThese pictures were taken from a height of around 22 km (67,400 feet) showing the blue earth and stratospheric and tropospheric clouds,\u201d says Sandip Chakrabarti, in charge of academic affairs at ICSP<\/span>. More on this first-of-its-kind mission on Nature India<\/a> soon. For now, the breathtaking pictures of one of the balloons, the eclipse (taken from their terrace) and the horizon.<\/em><\/p>\n

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And now we move on to some eclipse adventure. Chasing the eclipse of the century was Captain C. Kishore, a commercial pilot from New Delhi, on a flight chartered by seasoned eclipse chaser Robert Arcott from USA<\/span>. This was Arcott\u2019s 11th eclipse but Kishore\u2019s first such flight. \u201cWe took off from Paro International Airport in Bhutan at 6.50 in the morning so as to be at the Central Eclipse Line by 6.58 a.m., two minutes before the eclipse started. It was a cloudy morning with the hill tops not visible,\u201d Kishore says. They managed to get airborne ahead of the Druk Air Airbus 319, which was also doing an eclipse flight and climbed to 26,000 feet. The weather was perfect as they hit the central eclipse line.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe experience of the dance of the sun and moon was so dazzling, it was close to a heavenly feeling. I am not sure if I have seen anything more spectacular in my 16 years of flying career both as an Air Force fighter as well as a commercial aviator,\u201d Kishore says hoping there were more such eclipse chasers in India. Here\u2019s Kishore in the cockpit of that flight and what Arcott\u2019s camera caught.<\/p>\n

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The Bihar hamlet of Taregana, thought to be the best place in India to see the eclipse, wasn\u2019t the best after all. Here\u2019s what Debiprosad Duari, the research and academic director of M. P. Birla Planetarium in Kolkata, came back seeing. From under a thick cloud cover, this is the best lakhs of people thronging Taregana got. Duari gives us a detailed account of lessons learnt<\/a> from Taregana despite the celestial no-show on Nature India.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Kanad Mandke of Akashmitra Association, a Pune-based group of amateur astronomers, traveled to Bihar Sharif to film this amazing diamond ring among many other spectacles of the sun that day. \u201cThe photos were taken from a film camera, the negative was developed and then scanned. So don\u2019t mistake the white dots for stars, they are some defects in the scanner!\u201d he says.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This week belongs to the heavens \u2014 the Sun and the Moon, to be precise!  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astrophysics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}