The Potala Palace floodlit with the musical/dancing fountains and us
The Potala Palace floodlit with the musical/dancing fountains and us
Eclipse day started with an Eclipse Briefing at the hotel from
John Mason, who explained the arrangements for the day and what to expect.
Early afternoon the convoy of buses headed into the Gobi Desert to our exclusive
viewing spot close to the centre line.
As you can see below it was quite a substantial convoy that made the 2.5 hour drive from the hotel, held up a couple of times by checkpoints counting the number of tourists going into the desert (in close proximity to the Chinese Rocket launch station).
On arrival the sun took no time a all to disappear behind a big slow moving cloud
we set
up our stuff, anyway 
The sun emerged from behind the cloud just before 1st contact
- 18:15:48 (about a minute to spare)
The eclipse began and passed through 2nd contact (19:12:45), 3rd contact
(19:14:35) and finally 4th contact at 20:07:31.
It all looked something like this.....
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 The corona stretched out from the eclipsed sun |
 Some prominences were visible |
Time to relax after the event...
 Andrew with our Tour Manager, Peter |
 The setting sun gave out some long shadows |
 Val takes charge of the equipment. (Wires belong to temp. meas. stuff) |
It was an eclipse late in the day and we didn't have long to wait for the sun to set, before the trip back to the hotel
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