July 21, 2009: Total Solar Eclipse, South Pacific

Bob Jardine

For this eclipse expedition, we had a hard trade-off to make about 2 years in advance. This was going to be the longest eclipse of the century, in the same Saros as the great 1991 eclipse and an earlier eclipse that was the longest of the 20th century. But most of the eclipse track was across India and China in the Northern Hemisphere, where it was monsoon season, and the prospects for clear skies were poor. The longest point in the eclipse would be in the North Pacific, just south of Japan, where weather was also likely to be cloudy. The eclipse track ended in the South Pacific, with much better probability of clear skies, but the duration would be much shorter. We chose the latter -- about 3 minutes and 25 seconds of totality, with about a 50% chance of clear skies (or maybe the probability of 50% partial clouds, whatever).

On Tuesday morning, 7/21, we left Puka Puka Island (in the Cook Islands) and "steamed" NW towards the eclipse track. It was quite clear, and the latest weather reports predicted only about 20% clouds in our target area. By contrast, it was raining in much of the eclipse track in China. We thought we had chosen wisely.

As the afternoon wore on, clouds increased to over 50%. As first contact approached, it was still very cloudy. The captain and the tour leaders decided to race the ship into the most obvious cloud hole we could find. At first contact, the sun was behind a cloud. It played peek-a-boo all through the partial phase, and we got only a few glimpses now and then. We started thinking we had chosen poorly.

However, the combination of maneuvering the ship and suddenly clearing skies saved us. With less than 2 minutes to second contact, the relative movement of the earth, moon, sun, ship, and clouds all combined to "move" the sun/moon out into the clear. We had a beautiful 3.5 minutes of totality, including two brilliant diamond rings and a nice corona. Almost immediately after third contact, the partially eclipsed sun was again obscured by clouds, and it played peek-a-boo again until sunset. Due to the clouds, we missed the possible double green flash (which would have occurred, maybe, due to the sun setting partly eclipsed, with "horns" up).

Oh yeah, we got a report that, against all odds, some people saw the eclipse in China. I hope the TACOs who went there (including Rob and Steve and maybe others) got lucky too.

Bob J.