kidseclipse: Iran trip

2:50pm
Today is the day of the eclipse! Already

on this trip we've done so many wonderful things, but now we're about to see what we came halfway around the world to see, and I am really excited!

To get the best possible view we've traveled to a resort area not far from the city of Esfahan, in Iran. Since we arrived we've met some other scientific groups who have also come to observe the eclipse. Some French astronomers have their equipment set up nearby and some Iranian scientists are here too. CNN and some Iranian news cameras have been filming us all day and just a few minutes ago they got a picture of my teddy bear sitting on a lawn chair wearing Eclipse glasses! It won't be too long now before the eclipse starts, and I can feel the excitement in the air.

3:14pm
The eclipse has started! First contact just took place - that means that the edge of the moon has just crossed over the edge of the sun. Only about an hour before totality!

5:30pm
The eclipse was wonderful! It went by so fast, though! At first, the moon creeping over the sun didn't really make things all that dark. After the partial eclipse had become 60% or so though, that's when the air became much cooler and the light definitely became dimmer. We were all anxious for totality to begin, but there was so much neat stuff to do during the partial eclipse that the hour went by very quickly. One thing I enjoyed doing was testing out the pinhole effect: normally when light from the sun shines through a small hole and onto the ground or a dark piece of paper, you see a simple point of light. When there is a partial eclipse however, something great happens: instead of seeing a simple point of light on the piece of paper, you see a projection of the eclipse. In other words, you'll see three fourths of a circle instead of a whole circle of light! There were a lot of fun ways to try this experiment out. One was to put your hand out, fingers spread, and look at the projection made against a wall. When I did this I could see miniature eclipses in between my fingers! We tried this experiment out with the sombrero-like hats that we had on. These hats had many, many little holes in them and when sunlight shone through them we saw forty or fifty little eclipses on the ground underneath! This was a safe and fun way of keeping track of the progress the moon was making across the sun.

Before long though the partial eclipse was 80% and it finally looked like dusk outside. When it was 90% people got really quiet and sat down in their lawn chairs staring up through their eclipse glasses. I did the same thing and made sure my teddy bear was right next to me, getting just as good a view as I was! As totality got to be closer and closer I remember suddenly feeling as if something incredible was about to happen! There was a large crowd on a cliff nearby that had gathered to get a good view, and when the moon had completely covered the sun they erupted into loud shouts of excitement and guns were shot into the air to celebrate. I knew that I could take my eclipse glasses off as soon as I could no longer seen anything through them and when I did, I didn't see the image of totality that you normally see in pictures. Instead of the simple white corona you typically imagine when you think of eclipses, I saw brilliant beads of light around the edge of the moon change into the shape of a beautiful diamond ring right before my eyes! The diamond ring effect, which apparently happens because the moon has craters and is not a perfect sphere, was something that I had completely forgotten about and wasn't expecting. But there it was! It was brilliantly white and stared right at me! By the time the "ordinary" corona that you see in pictures came about, I was so overwhelmed I just sat back and marveled at it!

All the experts seem to agree that the totality for Esfahan lasted over a minute and a half, but if you ask me it went by so quickly it didn't seem like any more than a few seconds! After everything was over I asked the scientists what they all thought about it and what made our eclipse different from other eclipses. They told me that the corona was especially "active" during this eclipse because the sun is nearing something called "solar maximum" in its cycle. This made it even prettier to look at during totality. They also said that the sky didn't get as dark as it usually does during an eclipse. This was probably because of all the sand and dust in the air. Any small particles like that scatter the light from areas where there might not be a full eclipse, over to our area and make it lighter than it would normally be.

7:05pm
Tomorrow is going to be a long day. We'll wake up early and travel for a very long time. That means a lot of scrabble games on the bus and hopefully some more sleep.

About Search for Common Ground and their Iran trip:

The trip was led by Dr. Alan Hale, co-discoverer of the Hale-Bopp comet and director of the Southwest Institute for Space Research, and Russell ("Rusty") Schweickart, lunar module pilot for the rschweickart Apollo 9 mission. The trip delegation also included solar scientists Rock Bush (Stanford University) and Douglas Biesecker (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center).

The American scientists gave presentations at two universities and viewed the eclipse with their Iranian counterparts while using science as a medium of understanding and goodwill. The delegation spent approximately two weeks in Iran, visiting a number of cities including Esfahan, Tehran, Zanjan, Kermanshah, and Shiraz.

Search for Common Ground, a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Washington D.C., organized the trip. Search for Common Ground has been actively working to improve relations between the United States and Iran for over a year. The Zirakzadeh Science Foundation, a Tehran-based non-governmental organization, invited the American delegation to Iran and formally hosted the trip.

We thank Douglas Biesecker for the photos of Stephanie!