My Eclipse # 11 - for 11 Seconds
in very rural Northern Kenya

Sunday, 3 Nov 2013

Sibiloi National Park, Kenya
Aboard our chartered aircraft...

3° 30' 23"N - 35° 38' 7"E shadow ingress
3° 30' 47"N - 35° 38' 15"E shadow egress

Totality: 0m 11s

That's right - 11 seconds!  And we went all the way to Kenya to see it!

 




 

I know I keep saying this, but this was an eclipse I was DEFINITELY going to skip.  The allure of possibly seeing an eclipse at sea at the 0°N 0°E point (at the intersection of the Prime Meridian and the Equator) was offset by the possibility of also seeing armed pirates.  The allure of going by myself to Cape Verde or Gabon was offset by the quite likely prospect of bad weather.  And, being a Hybrid eclipse (one where - in this case - the beginning of the path offers only annularity, because the tip of the umbra only just barely touches the earth a little later further down the path), the exceedingly short duration of this eclipse was enough to cause me to want to relegate it in favor of saving my ducats for future travels.

However, I got an e-mail from my eclipse-chasing buddies.  They were renting two aircraft, and were going to this out-of-the-way spot in Northern Kenya, where maybe there might be 1 or 2 visitors to this National Park each month.  (Like, if we died, no one would ever find our bodies...)  And the planes were on standby, in case we needed to head skyward in case of bad weather.  And, oh by the way - since enough people were splitting the cost, it wasn't really that much...  That did it, and I was on board!  I made my plans for Nairobi!

We planned to all converge in a nice hotel in that wonderful, vibrant capital city, and make our final preparations for the day trip up to Sibiloi - to see a sunset eclipse that would last only 11 seconds!  Actually, this would be pretty cool - because for an eclipse this short, there are a lot of edge effects (Baily's Beads, prominences, chromosphere), and huge wide-angle shadow views that can be taken in that will be most stunning at just this type of eclipse.  So my challenge was to concoct a video/photo regimen that could survive practically any eventuality.  As I write this (a month before the event), everything is still not finalized.  But the plans are made, and the trip is set.  So, like it or not, I will make my date with the shadow, and do what I can to try and document it for this page...

Check out our plans at:

http://nicmosis.as.arizona.edu:8000/ECLIPSE_WEB/ECLIPSE_13/TSE2013_PLANNING_OVERVIEW.html

*********************

And now that the eclipse has come and gone, I will offer a narrative of the events of that day - which in my mind ranks as one of the most amazing in the annals of eclipse chasing - EVER.  It is certainly one of the highlights of my experiences!  But read for yourself:

The plan for eclipse day was very simple - we would gather in the lobby of our hotel in Nairobi before sunrise, and take two hired cars to the Wilson airport - smaller than the International airport (but still quite large), it is the field that serves mostly local flights.  There, we would meet with our air charter company, and pile into two specially-prepared (several seats had been removed) Cessna Grand Caravans.  Our charter company did such an outstanding job, I do not mind giving them an absolutely shameless plug.  When in Nairobi, look no further than  Boskovic Air Charters, Ltd.  "Tad" Watts is the Managing Director of the firm, and also serves in the capacity of pilot.  He did a magnificent job captaining the lead aircraft, and his top-notch firm stand highly recommended by all for such superb handling of the aircraft and logistics for our most amazing adventure!

[DRAMATIS PERSONAE]

Seven of us like-minded souls were to fly in plane #1, and six were to follow in plane #2, as follows:

Plane #1:

Plane #2:

Plus our pilots, of course! (Though only one per plane - just like the number of engines!)  Tad sat left seat on plane #1, and Tom Cunningham was in command of the sister ship.

Note to self - though this was to be my 11th total eclipse(putting me well above and beyond everyone I talk to in "real life"), on this trip I believe EVERYONE else except maybe Benno(who is yet a teenager) had more in hand than me.  So I therefore remained quite the novice among this elite group.

The process of boarding the planes was reasonably painless, and we were off.  Our destination was one Sibiloi National Park - a remote (very remote) preserve in the NW part of the country, visited very seldom by anyone, but still staffed by the Kenyan Government; and on this single day, to receive and host more visitors than it usually saw in the better part of a year.  They had prepared and resurfaced a dirt landing strip, along with a parking ramp that could (AND DID) serve well over 20 planes that day!  There were two small buildings that served for shelter, along with an enclosed squat toilet (sporting two stalls!!)  This was far better than the bushes we had thought we would need to squat behind (and which didn't exist - the land was indeed quite flat and barren).

The flight to the Park was stunning.  We travelled over mountains and plains, multi-colored riverbeds and terrain that looked unchanged from what its appearance must have been a million years ago.  Everywhere the land was shaped by the flows of ancient volcanic eruptions, and the park itself was covered with the rich, black igneous stuff - reminiscent of the volcanic desert plains northeast of Los Angeles, near Barstow.




As we flew in to land, we crossed over Lake Turkana.  On the shores of this ancient lake, the Leakeys discovered some of the oldest humanoid skeletons known to exist.  Many of these are preserved in the National Museum in Nairobi, and a visit to that single room is what makes a museum trip positively mandatory for any trip to Kenya!  The lake has no outlets - the only water that exits does so by evaporation.  So the alkalinity is very high, and the lake is very green.  But the lake itself is huge - 15 miles wide, and over a hundred miles long, and we would be viewing the eclipse from within a mile of its shores.  (Well, that was the plan, at least!)

We had departed Wilson at about 7:20am, and arrived at the park just before 9:30.  We were among the first few planes there, and so we got the best parking spots - which would be useful in making a hasty exit.  You see, The eclipse would occur at 5:25pm, and the sun set about 50 minutes later.  Because there were no lights at this field, a restriction was firmly in place against any flight activities after sunset.  We would therefore need to leave in a bit of haste, just following the eclipse.  This meant we didn't want to be stuck behind other planes!

Of course, most of the people who came in on their own planes (ALL Cessnas!) immediately headed out for campsites along the lakefront.  We did not have that luxury, unless we wanted to stay the night.




Aircraft #1 was actually intending to stay the night, as many of our group had indicated an interest in camping in order to observe the sky that evening, and to watch the sun set while in partial eclipse.  The interest in this was for me outweighed by the desire to return to a nice, comfy hotel bed in Nairobi, so I was planning to be with the group planning to depart yet that afternoon on plane #2.  And, if the weather turned bad, we all had the option of boarding our aircraft and making an aerial observation of the eclipse.  This would preclude spending the night, for those who had expressed the interest - but it was in any event absolutely preferable to missing the eclipse.

So - whether we were to stay or to go, we needed to have a beeline to the runway - and by arriving early, we were assured of that preferential spot in line.  While the weather in Nairobi had been quite pleasant, our day in the desert was forecast to be hot and humid - bordering on miserable.  Shade was only to be had within the small sheds that had been set up - and so our hats, safari clothing and sunscreen came in very handy.  We had packed in enough TP for everyone to partake, and enough water for all.  Though weight restrictions had limited the amount of astronomical and photographic gear we could bring, no compromise could be made on the safety of the gang.  No major medical attention was to be found in this quite inaccessible spot, and the danger of heatstroke was very real.



I was very pleased, though, to see the level of armaments the guards all around us were carrying.  Given the tense state of affairs in the capitol city just preceding the eclipse time frame, there would be no surprises on this outing to spoil the tourists' experience.  The Kenyans are to be commended for having placed us at such ease, and making us feel so safe in their wonderful homeland. The wind was likewise very welcome - a steady stiff breeze out of the east - and this also caused our mosquito fears to be completely put to rest.  No way could the critters land on us with a 20-30kt wind buffeting them around!  Still, we applied the DEET and took our malaria pills.  But the "mozzies" were to be no factor on this day.

We got our bearings, and began making plans for any eventuality.  Glenn had previously calculated a vast number of possible flight paths that we might need to make, in the event that we needed to go airborne.  During the course of the day, baseline values had been programmed into the lead plane's GPS, and these would be used together with real-time feedback from the aircraft's position and instrument readings to settle on and fly the most appropriate course, if the time came.  This would give us the flexibility of avoiding any clouds that might pop up, so long as we stayed to the east of the lake.  (The sun was setting toward the west, of course, and we did not want to go west in order not to have any possibility of being in the way of anyone's ground-based view of this fleeting eclipse.)

Because totality would only last 11 seconds (!), we had to have a good sky; even one small rogue cloud in the wrong spot would destroy the entire eclipse for everyone.  So weather-watching and planning began in earnest around noon.  The clouds were many, and were scattered enough that there was significant hope they might dissipate by eclipse time.  But there were not enough holes that a clear fly/no-fly decision could intelligently and definitively be made.  It was decided that we would make that final decision by 4:30, at which time we would have an hour to get packed, get airborne, and get ourselves positioned for whichever path the planes would ultimately fly.

Of course, we all wanted to observe from the ground.  The pictures would be better, the group who wanted to spend the night would be able to do that, it would cost us less (the fly option had an associated price tag, due to the extra fuel usage), and there was a real possibility that by flying, we might still miss the eclipse.

How so?  Well, keep in mind that due to the low angle of the sun, the shadow would be moving (from West to East) many thousands of miles per hour by the time it arrived at our site.  The plane would only be able to fly so fast, and there are no "back-up-and-do-overs" in this game.  The Moon's shadow is bearing down on you, and its cross section is very small for this short of an eclipse.  The mathematics are well known, but it is still a bit like trying to thread a needle on a roller coaster to try and place yourself on exactly the right path and speed, at just the right moment, given an unknown altitude and winds aloft, so that the shadow will actually envelop you as it passes - thus enabling you to see totality.  There are very few people in the world who can pull this off (I can actually only think of two!), and we were with one of them.  If it could be done, Glenn could do it.  But the pressure on him to succeed, though he accepted that challenge with great optimism, was immense.

If we stayed put, it was a given that we would find ourselves in the shadow of the eclipse.  But actually seeing it was starting to look less and less likely.  And with only a couple of hours to go, the beginning of the drama was only now beginning to unfold.



It was hot, and some of us were starting to show the effects.  Benno had taken to the sanctity of the plane, as had Charles.  Many of the group had earlier decided to hike to the lake, and that took a lot out of several of them.  If you've ever tried to hike through Death Valley, you know the drill:  You feel as though you can make it to that "next rise", but that rise turns out to be 5 miles away, and hiking in heat is so much more strenuous than the stately, cool, neighborhood or state-park jaunts that most of us are accustomed to.  Glenn had determined to set up his observing equipment at our site (almost willing the clouds to part for him), and the effort to gather and place all the rocks that were required to hold his tarp down against the ceaseless wind took quite a bit of the energy that some of us had left.  I ate an orange, which instantly revived my blood sugar, and Joel took a well-deserved break within the shade of the plane.  Steve was content to enjoy his drink of choice within one of the sturdy enclosures, and one of the pilots on another plane had brought us in some ice!  This was very well-received by all who had up to now been enjoying their beverages at "room temperature".

But it was now going on 3:30pm, and the clouds had seemed to actually grow worse.  The chances were becoming very great that a cloud would happen to be covering the sun from our vantage point at the divine moment, and we were all fighting the temptation to say the obvious.  We needed something, anything, to at last make up our minds, and tip the balance toward a concrete decision.

We got it.

To the northwest of us, a microburst began developing.  This manifested itself as a large, billowing cloud that was firmly anchored to the ground, but which rose up into the sky for quite a few hundred feet.  And it was growing; as we watched, the huge mass of cloud and rain slowly churned its way southward - not impacting us directly, but building exactly into the line of sight toward where the sun would be at eclipse time.  Forget the cumulus overhead - we would now not be seeing the eclipse at all, if this monster didn't dissipate in time!  And still it grew and grew, fueled by the instability of the hot, humid afternoon air.

And then, to the east, we were treated to a glorious rainbow.  A beautiful, full rainbow (which ultimately developed quite an impressive secondary rainbow to boot!), which seemed to rise out of the mountain range about ten miles to the east of us - mountains which were themselves basking in sunshine.  Yet the rainbow was hiding a surprise - a wall of rain that was rapidly taking over the entire eastern horizon. We checked with the locals, and found that storms of that type were pretty common.  In fact, they reckoned that by the looks of things, that storm would be on us - just about exactly at eclipse time.

Both of these weather phenomena would make flying difficult.  And the wall of stuff to the east might prevent us from even taking off, if it began moving faster toward us, or if we were delayed in our getaway.  We not only needed to take off before that wall of rain hit, but we would also need to climb over it.  And we couldn't then go east, because our line of sight wouldn't scale the clouds that were building to what would at that point be our west. And our plane's ceiling was limited to 12,500' - possibly not enough to top the clouds.   If we were going to fly, we would have to fly NOW, and immediately go WEST, to try and get above the microburst - or if the worst case developed, to try and find a hole in the clouds AT ALTITUDE, and synch that with a hastily-prepared flight path that would take us into the shadow's unrelenting and unchangeable path.  This meant a complete change of plans, and almost no time in which to throw away our old plans and make new ones.  Glenn, seemingly the only person to realize and internalize the gravity of this fact, got to work with his Mac right away, studying and re-studying the dozens of possible flight paths he had calculated, to try and hone in on the few that might hold the greatest promise of success.  He was not in talking mode - he was in full-blown Eclipse Mode.  And even for Glenn, time was slipping away.

And then...

All day long, we had been treated to dust devils.  Some far away, some within only a few hundred yards, but all very tall and strong, powered by the steady winds that had been blowing all day from the east. We noted them, talked about them, and laughed about them as though they were somehow cute and innocent.  But about five minutes before our takeoff decision was made for us, I had noticed (and photographed) a long line of VERY tall dust devils off on the horizon.  I had no idea of their distance, or their scale - but it felt as though they might be 100' tall, and maybe 5 miles away or so.  It's hard to tell, with no frames of reference in that vast expanse of nothingness.  But there were a lot of them - and they were big.

Now, Joel has a tradition that he performs at every eclipse, and he chose this moment to gather everyone up and issue a blessing to our travels, and to natural phenomena in general.  (Details of this wonderful Jewish blessing can be found in Joel's own words here and here!) He has had wonderful luck with this blessing, and none of us wanted to eschew anything that might possibly help us in our quest.  So, having packed everything up in the virtual certainty that we were now flying soon (leaving Glenn's tarp as a gift to the staff at Sibiloi), Joel began his recitation.  At one point, Glenn looked up to advise him to hurry, and he finished up in short order.  Then Glenn said, "Everyone get in the planes - NOW!"  We took that to mean that we needed to leave, and dutifully headed off toward our seats.  Well, we found out later that Glenn had given this directive immediately after he and Tad had simultaneously observed the ominous oncoming wall of dust; they had seen the storm, immediately recognized its impending impact, and had at once come to the same open-mouthed conclusion.  Glenn's advice was meant to get us all into shelter, strap down, button the planes up, and hang on - because it was-a-comin' in!  We were not taking off - we were protecting ourselves from the impending calamity!

And what was the calamity?  Only the most amazing wall of billowing dust, howling wind, and zero-visibility brownout that anyone could ever imagine.  For several minutes, we were engulfed in literal nothingness.  Outside the windows, it was brown.  It was dust, it was wind, it was naught but nothingness - as we were pummeled by what felt at the time to be a dust storm of biblical proportions.  You could not see the propeller of the plane out the cockpit window.  You certainly could not see the other plane, a mere 50 feet away.  And thoughts raged through our head of not only missing this eclipse, of not only not being able to fly that day, but of the possible damage that might be being done to the airplanes - an event that might well strand us here in this land of no parts to install and no mechanics to install them - possibly for days!  And the heat inside the planes was sweat-drippingly oppressive.  We cracked a lee window just a bit, accepting the blanketing dust together with its few accompanying billows of cool breeze - which managed to keep the air breathable.  As the gritty fog cleared, Catalin thankfully thought to grab a very telling photo:



© 2013 Catalin Beldea


Now, we knew we were in trouble.  How long would this storm last?  Would it ground us permanently?  Could we take off in time to see the eclipse?  How long would we be stranded in this ill-fated place?  Overwhelmed at the certainty of having just "lost" the eclipse, Glenn experienced an actual physical manifestation of that certainty through a measurement of his elevated pulse rate.  These fears weighed heavily on all our minds as we pondered the arrogance of having audaciously schlepped ourselves halfway around the world, to see an 11-second eclipse in a country where most people did not have the money or leisure time to leave work for even an hour, to see what we considered to be the greatest sight on the planet.  Karma was truly becoming for us one true mother of a bitch.  (Though spending thousands of dollars for eleven seconds?  One of my more cynical friends back home later remarked that he himself had once done that very thing before - in Thailand...)

The storm finally cleared after about five minutes, and we were at drop-dead launch time.  Quarter till five; eclipse minus 40 minutes.  We scrambled out of the plane, discovered that Charles had been stranded OUTSIDE the plane and had taken the brunt of the storm (but was nevertheless optimistic about moving on toward a hasty takeoff), and while the pilots checked the planes over for wear, we all convened for the last time.  Glenn had once again locked himself firmly into computation mode, and had the flight plans calculated and entered into plane #1's GPS.  We then took five minutes (which seemed like three hours), while the pilots programmed plane #2's GPS with the same plans.  We would have to communicate by radio as to whichever plan we would end up actually flying, but we at least had a number of options.  And with an amazingly welcome thumbs-up from our pilots (with thanks given to Joel's timely exhortive prayers), we were go for launch.  We waved a sad good-bye to those who were to be stranded on the ground, and taxied off from our preferred positions on the ramp.



Plane #2 took off just after plane #1, at 4:56:22pm local time. The shadow was by then over western Africa, and headed toward us FAST.  The wall of rain was still there to our East, but we turned quickly to the South, and headed southwesterly over the lake as Rick helped Tom execute a very high-performance climb.  It was now a race to get to our service ceiling, as we dodged the clouds that had been ever-building to our west. Jostled along thusly, all thought of any preparation or setup of equipment was quickly swept aside.  (I did have a video camera set up on the anti-sun side of our plane, and briefly considered unmounting it to try and handhold a video - but that was what the Canon 7D was supposed to have been for...)  I ensured without question that my GPS was recording our track (which turned out to be of some value in later forensically determining the precise eclipse circumstances of our ultimate intraumbral location - the one valuable thing that I managed to offer this expedition).

Our trailing #2 plane followed Tad's lead plane in lockstep; and thanks solely to the skill of our pilots, we hit each waypoint separated only by mere seconds!



Reaching altitude, we headed west toward the intercept points Glenn had calculated, which one by one fell by the wayside as we reached them at times which mathematically precluded any thought of a turn toward a successful eclipse intercept.  In tandem, with our trail plane following Tad's lead, our planes executed a 180° turn, to get us onto the downwind leg of our eclipse run.  We established that downwind leg (traveling the same easterly direction as the encroaching shadow, though at a much lower airspeed!) at 5:20pm, with only a few precious minutes to go.  Now, it was all about finding the correct point from which to turn left onto a base leg, and fly north, directly into the shadow's path (based on our altitude of 10,000' - and keeping in mind that altitude makes a BIG difference to the position of the shadow, when the sun is so low in the sky).  And that shadow was racing toward us from the west at 7,000 mph!  Turn too soon, and we'd be through the path by the time the shadow overtook us.  Turn too late, and we'd never catch up to it in time as it passed us by, never to return. We had no way to communicate with plane #1 from our positions in the back of the plane, but we were urging Glenn on in spirit.  "Turn! Turn! Turn!" we collectively called out in unison, as the clock ticked down the final seconds.  Glenn ultimately had to guess at the turning point, because we didn't have a good read on winds aloft.  He finally, based on his years of experience in guiding eclipse-bound aircraft, and swift mental interpolation of his various pre-calculated points, gave the command to his pilot: "TURN ...NOW!!"  And at 5:23:20, With a hundred seconds to go until totality, we finally began our turn to the left, with the shadow only 145 miles away!  The little plane chugged ahead, plugging its way desperately into the path of the approaching juggernaut.  We fought to climb just a bit, to clear a cloud that threatened to swallow us up.  In plane #1, Glenn abandoned his flight-deck seat, to throw himself prone over the rows of seats behind him and stare at the eclipse unfolding before his eyes.  (If someone had only photographed him - this would have been the ultimate "plank"!) The rear cargo door on the lead aircraft was thrown open, to allow everyone an unobstructed view of totality.  On plane #2, we all huddled at the same rear cargo door (though on our plane, it remained securely shut - no time to be picky!)  The earth below us blackened as totality began for those who were ground-bound, and our plane magically and miraculously entered the shadow of the moon at 5:24:59pm - only one second behind schedule!! 

We had done it!  We were looking at the totally eclipsed Sun!  My handheld video plans evaporated as I stared at the beauty of Baily's beads, an eerily brighter-than-usual sky, and a ring of inner corona and prominences that were simply stunning.  The mental video camera went into full record mode as we all whooped and hollered like frat boys on amateur night, and all of us on both planes (save Joel with his iPhone and Catalin with his perfect setup - how DOES he do it?) imaged this eclipse only retinally.  Matthew screamed "We've got it!", and we all gave our compulsory shouts of victory in unison as the glory of totality enveloped our small airborne selves.  The eleven seconds of totality lasted for minutes, as time slowed for us in the face of such a severe over-stimulation of our senses, and then it was time for the shadow to leave.  A beautiful diamond ring directly at 6-o'clock on the solar circumferential dial held on for a few glorious moments - and then it was over.  We had come all this way, had battled heatstroke and clouds and rain and dust, had fought our way into the sky on two little airplanes that had dutifully done their jobs so perfectly, and had made and kept a date with the shadow of the Moon over one of the most desolate regions of earth imaginable.  Matthew called out an unscripted, celebratory "IN THE BAG!!!" as we all high-fived and hugged and bonded in a way that only those who have been to battle together can truly appreciate.  It was a miracle, and we had experienced it together.  The microphone was opened to Rick and Tom (our pilot), and collective joyous exchanges were had by all on both planes, as we executed our turn to the south, toward a warm steak, a cold beer, and home.

In retrospect, the fact that we even saw this eclipse at all was due to a series of nothing short of what can rightfully be called miracles.  The dust storm should have grounded us.  The microburst should have stood between us and the sun.  The wall of rain to the east should have prevented us from even taking off.  The mathematics of finding that spot in the sky, and turning toward it at the right second, should have been too much to have overcome in real time.  Yet we did.  How we did it is still a mystery to all of us, even a week after the fact.  Yet accomplish it we did.  After the certainty of having lost our eclipse (as surely as Tom Hanks' remark in the movie - "We just lost the Moon."), we somehow managed to regain OUR Moon, and experience totality on this magical day.  And that evening over dinner, as we all kissed and fondled the eclipse flag (which has never been clouded out, and has been to EVERY eclipse since the early 1970s), we reflected on our extreme good fortune, and on the miracles of life that had brought us all together, from every corner of the world, in pursuit of something that we are all so passionate about.  It was truly a day to remember, one of the best days of my entire life, and one I'm not sure it will be possible to ever surpass.


© 2013 Catalin Beldea

Thanks be to Glenn for the math.  Thanks be to Joel for the blessings.  Thanks be to Tom and Tad and the entire team at Boskovic Air Charters, Ltd, for their masterful flying and most exceptional hosting of this most intrepid group of shadow-chasers.  Thanks be to everyone who was there, for the will and the spirit and the determination to achieve something that is so indescribable, and so very humbling.  And a special, personal thanks to Rick and Tom, who let me sit right seat on the flight home, and assist in flying that Grand Caravan on instruments for over an hour with a 30kt crosswind - trying to hold heading.  That was a pretty freakin' cool ending to a pretty cool flight - and a pretty cool day!

But mostly, thanks to Kenya, and thanks to Africa.  I'm so glad that I did this trip, that I was at one point considering passing on.  I cordially invite the reader to make his or her own date with the shadow, to experience first-hand the joy and the drama and the excitement that comes from the chase - and the capture - the next time the fates of celestial mechanics dictate the return of the Moon's shadow to our humble planet.  And I offer, with the greatest of humility, and the greatest of respect, the eclipse chaser's eternal mantra:


WHEN'S THE NEXT ONE?


Indeed, when is it?  So that I can be sure to be there?

Why, March 20, 2015, of course!!


back to mcglaun.com's Eclipse site