Russia 1981 (13)

More photos from around the solar eclipse observation site at Shortandy...

As well as the yurts the Russians had very kindly built a hut for us to have breakfast. The waitresses were in Kazakh national costume and they even provided decorative foliage and flowers...

Andy and I at breakfast

Andy and Martin
Martin was someone else on the trip

The point of this experiment was to observe the changes in light level and quality during the solar eclipse

Steve Webb setting up his camera

Neil and one of our interpreters
Neil and the interpreter were smitten with each other

Some of my solar eclipse photos. Unfortunately I didn't have a tripod and really had no idea what I was doing when I took these photos...

The eclipse lasted 1hour 15minues with totality lasting 1minute 9seconds
During totality all the bird and insect noises just stopped, completely.

As soon as the eclipse was over the clouds moved in

Post eclipse champagne

We left the site at around 11:30am and got back to theTselinograd around 1pm - Just in time for lunch. Lunch was salad, soup, meat and potato scallops. We had the afternoon free. Andy dozed while I pottered around again. The shower is plumbed in wrong. The cold tap gives hot water and the cold, hot. Probably some Soviet ruse to confound invading armies and the reason why both Napoleon and Hitler couldn't invade the country.

People are starting to get a little ill, all sorts of stomach problems are appearing. I'm just having to go to the bathroom a lot more than normal but am otherwise OK.

This page created 24th September 2011, last modified 25th September 2011