2008 Total Solar Eclipse - the post-mortem by Mark Sukhija

Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the 2008 total solar eclipse, in spite of our initial investigations. The total eclipse was total in Nunavut (Canada), Greenland, the Arctic, Russia and parts of Mongolia and China. Elsewhere a partial solar eclipse was visible.

Eclipse chasers don't waste time in getting their pictures of the eclipse on line - so I've included a couple of links to various reports and pictures on and about the eclipse.

Here in Zürich heavy cloud cover, torrential rain/storm weather ensured that the 20 or so seconds of partial eclipse were not visible at all.

Total eclipse pictures

Well known eclipse chaser Klipsi published this video of the 2008 eclipse to YouTube.

This is an excellent selection of photographs from a specially chartered flight to see the eclipse in-flight over the north pole.

Clouds were in the sky in the Gobi desert in China area. Thankfully, these didn't get in the way of totality. Here are some pictures from observing the 1st partial phase, 2nd partial phase, prominences and the corona republished on Astronation.com

Spaceweather.com has published a eclipse photo gallery.

An interesting slideshow from the Polar flight has been published on the Discover Channel website.

From Weinan in China on YouTube. Includes useful information on kit.

An excellent trip report from China by Daniel Fischer.

Trip report from Novosibirsk by Jay Paschoff.

The Chicago Tribune has also published several images of the eclipse from around the world.

Xinhuanet.com published this news report reporting clear weather for observing the eclipse in western China. Pictures are available by clicking on the numbers at the bottom.

These pictures from the China show not only the eclipse but many people observing the eclipse also.

Anthony Ayiomamitis has also published some pictures from Novosibirsk on his website here and here

This set of images includes both eclipse photographs and more images of China.

Various images of the 2008 eclipse - from China

This is a set of images from Altai.

More images from Jinta, China. Includes pinhole images.

Video

I found this video on LiveLeak which shows the total solar eclipse from 27,000 ft.

Several eclipse videos have also been posted on YouTube.

Partial eclipse pictures

• Paul Evans in County Antrim, Northern Ireland - Paul reported cloud cover in Antrim and some of his pictures were taken through 80% cloud cover. One of his pictures was republished at Spaceweather.com
• The BBC has published this report on the eclipse and some pictures of the British partial eclipse sent in by readers.

Multimedia

NASA have published several podcasts about solar eclipses.

Further reading