A plan comes together

Phew! I have my fingers crossed as I type (and am still sat on the edge of my seat), but the plan seems to be coming together. I love it.

The plaque has arrived safe and sound in Lisbon. The team will rendezvous there tomorrow for the start of the official anniversary celebrations, then carry it the rest of the way as hand luggage (yikes). The press release is fleshing out nicely, and my shiny new iPhone is charged up to send back photos of the various ceremonies. Hmm, I hope that works - I kind of used this excuse to myself to justify the expense. And finally, my visa to travel into Sao Tome was granted this morning. Kind of last minute, but hey: all's well.

Sky at Night

There's now just under a week before we leave, and the pressure is rising. There are last-minute preparations for the exhibition in Sao Tome, and making sure the plaque actually arrives with us. DHL report the parcel as having "irregular delays", whatever that means. Unfortunately, while the UK service desk is open at weekends, the parcel is currently half-way through France: and they're closed. Draw your own conclusions about European working rights.

In brighter news, the expedition's first UK press coverage arrived in this month's BBC's Sky at Night magazine. Best of all, they sent me a copy of the whole magazine, so I get to relax for an hour this afternoon with a cup of tea and a read.

The plaque is ready to go

The manufacture of the commemorative plaque has been completed, and it's looking beautiful! The design is engraved into brushed stainless steel, and describes the personalities and scientific excitement of the eclipse in diagrams and Portuguese/English text. This is being shipped out and will be unveiled at Roça Sundy on 29th May.

The tickets are booked...

We have booked our plane tickets to São Tomé e Príncipe. True to our attempt to turn this into a journey that will promote not simply astronomy but also the local economy and tourism potential, we are going with STP Airways, the country’s only airline that operates a single flight between Lisbon and S.Tomé once a week. Fingers crossed, STP Airways will continue to be in business until May. We’ve heard good things about it, but it had to stop its flights intermittently once before. (By the way, for the ordinary traveller a cheaper option during the summer holiday season may be the Portuguese Pestana group, which offers a package tour that includes charter flight and accommodation).

Before heading out to STP, we will spend two days in Lisbon where we’ve been invited to participate in a celebration of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition organised by the Portuguese Geographical Society. Their enthusiasm and effort is really quite impressive. The celebration will include an opening ceremony on Thursday, 21^st of May, and on the following day, a symposium with several speakers including the President of Príncipe (José Cassandra) which is an autonomous region of this small island state, the Portuguese Minister of Science and, from our team, Pedro Gil Ferreira. A truly grand opening to this exciting trip!

 

Commemorative plaque design

The design of the commemorative plaque has been finalised, and it is being fabricated by Premier Engraving. The plaque will be installed at the Sundy plantation, and unveiled at a ceremony on 29 May 2009: the 90th anniversary of the solar eclipse.

Eddington had set off by now...

In the days of steamships and postwar troop transportation, it took a long time to sail to Africa. Eddington had to set off on the 8th of March 1919. Well, he intended to arrive in time to take some pre-eclipse exposures of the Hyades star cluster while it was still visible at night, so he left earlier than he needed to. In the end, it was lucky because he spent a month waiting for onward transportation from Madeira. But in the mean time, at least he enjoyed the cakes on board - which were not subject to rationing and filled with raisins to "pre-war levels". And the bananas on Madeira. Sir Arthur Eddington seems to have some sort of banana adict.

Background reading

I just spent a fantastic few hours at the Einstein Papers Project on CalTech campus. Einstein bequeathed all his papers to Jerusalem University, but a copy of them all is stored at CalTech, where they are gradually being translated (most are in German) and published. The archive includes correspondence between Einstein and Eddington, discussing the expedition and later works, as well as the fiasco over the Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal, which was planned to be awarded to Einstein in 1920, but wasn't. Wow, scientific progress in those days was slow, being conducted by transatlantic airmail... and maybe more thoughtful than astro-ph... The archive also includes letters Eddington wrote to his mother during his (long) journey to Principe and from the island. More on those to follow.