From an airplane flying eclipse chasers high over the Arctic, Bill and Denise Kramer of Dublin, Ohio, took this beautiful shot at mid-totality. The expedition was led by Sky & Telescope's J. Kelly Beatty. Click image for larger view.

Bill and Denise Kramer

On the Arctic Ocean

Rick Fienberg, Sky & Telescope's editor emeritus, led an eclipse expedition aboard the Russian icebreaker 50 Years of Victory in the Barents Sea west of Novaya Zemlya. "This trip has been awesome," he writes "— polar bears in the wild, a dip in the ocean at the North Pole — and we beat the odds and saw today's total eclipse, from a position near 76° north, 55° east.

"The day dawned foggy, but by 10:55 a.m. our time when the partial eclipse began, the fog had burned off and we were under scattered clouds with patches of blue sky all around. Excitement began to build among the approximately 100 passengers and 100 crew out on deck as we watched first contact through our solar filters. Almost immediately, though, the clouds merged into a single mass, hiding the Sun from view except for brief intervals during which we could see the progress of the partial eclipse, with the clouds as our filter.

"With about a half hour to go till totality we could see sunlight sparkling on the water in the distance, so the ship steamed at full power toward it. We reached an area where the cloud cover was thin enough to grant us a spectacular view of the eclipse from just before the start of totality through to the very end.

"We saw a beautiful 'diamond ring' as the corona emerged around the Sun along with several electric-pink prominences, most notably a large one at the 1 o'clock position for us. I was glancing occasionally at the horizon all around to experience the Moon's shadow washing over us — which was very dramatic out on the open water.

"Mercury immediately popped into view a few degrees to the Sun's left; I briefly looked further left to see brighter Venus shining too, about 15° to the Sun's left.

The diamond ring. S&T's Dennis di Cicco took this image among a crowd of 4,000 people at "Eclipse City," which had been prepared by Chinese officials for tourists in Weize, China.

"The diamond ring at 3rd contact came too soon, as always. Within minutes of the end of totality the remaining cloud cover burned off, and by 4th contact an hour later we were sailing toward Murmansk under an almost completely clear, blue sky.

"According to the climatology, we had less than a 30% chance of seeing totality, yet I'm now 7 for 7 for total solar eclipses."