Up front in the flight deck, Schneider had his camera 

 equipment set up on a platform stabilized by two gyro- 

 scopes. His experiments dealt in part with the density 

 of plasma in the solar corona and the question of how 

 it is heated to millions of degrees Fahrenheit. He was 

 collaborating with Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in 

 Massachusetts, who was stationed within the totality path 

 at Akademgorodok, Siberia. They had collaborated on a 

 similar observation during the Antarctic eclipse ot 2003. 



Those 175 seconds went fast: a second diamond ring 

 blazed forth, and the corona quickly faded away. There 

 was a sensation of released tension as a cacophony of 

 whoops and cheers greeted an eclipse flag that was paraded 

 around the cabin. The owner of the flag was Craig Small, 

 a colleague of mine at the Hayden Planetarium, who 

 considers it his lucky charm. He has traveled to twenty- 

 six eclipses and has never been clouded out! 



After the eclipse, the rest of our journey was spent 

 "flightseeing" over fields of pack ice interspersed with 

 gaps of water and enormous icebergs. We counted down 

 to our impending arrival at 90 degrees north latitude, and 

 soon we were on top of the world. After flying directly 

 above the North Pole, we circled it first clockwise and 

 then counterclockwise, each time flying across all 360 

 degrees of longitude in just two minutes. From that point, 

 the distance to northern Canada was only 465 miles, put- 



ting us closer to the American continent than to Europe. 



As we headed back to Diisseldorf, many on the air- 

 plane were comparing digital images and videos of the 

 darkened Sun, and some were already making plans to 

 chase the next eclipse, set for July 22, 2009. Totality 

 will sweep over parts of India, China, and the Ryukyu 

 Islands of Japan; in some locations it will last more than 

 six minutes, the longest that celestial mechanics will 

 allow until the year 2132. 



One passenger perhaps summed it up best: "No 

 pictures or words can ever convey the experience of 

 totality. It's something you feel; you just get hooked. I 

 came here to be awed — and I am." 



Chief Meteorologist at News 12 Westchester, 

 serving New York's Hudson Valley. Joe Rao 

 has been an assiduous amateur astronomer 

 for more than forty years. Since 1986 he has 

 been an instructor and guest lecturer at New 

 York's Hayden Planetarium. He has also co- 

 led two eclipse expeditions and has served 

 as onboard meteorologist for three eclipse 

 ocean cruises. Rao is a regular contributor to Space.com and the 

 Fanners' Almanac and writes a Sunday feature. "Sky Watch," for the 

 New York Times. His column for Natural History has been a regular 

 feature since January 1995. 



Web links related to this article can be found at 

 www.naturalhistorymag.com 



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