Umbraphiles, or sun worshippers, are apparently growing in numbers, perhaps because we are starstuff ourselves. Solar eclipses, infrequent though they are, have recently spawned a healthy tourist industry. From Martin Ince in the Financial Times:

“Tour operators report a surge in interest in eclipse viewing, sparked by the ‘eclipse of the century’ in July 2009. It was visible across large parts of India and China and lasted six minutes 39 seconds – the longest eclipse until 2132. It filled every hotel in the Yangtze Delta region, where over 30,000 eclipse watchers based themselves, and brought an extra 7,000 foreign tourists to Shanghai, mostly from the US and Japan. China Daily reported at the time that about 80 special flights were staged to allow passengers to see the eclipse even if clouds threatened: a good move, as it rained in Shanghai.

‘We’re finding this sort of holiday to be hugely popular since the China eclipse, and the trend continued for Easter Island the following year,’ says Simon Grove, head of product at the tour operator Explore. ‘I think the appeal of astronomical tourism in general has increased in recent years too. Last year’s spectacular Northern Lights helped to fuel interest that those well-publicised eclipses had ignited.’

Part of the joy of this hobby is that the moon’s shadow can fall anywhere on the earth’s surface. This means eclipse-chasing needs careful planning, but also that eclipse-lovers end up in places they would never visit otherwise, including Easter Island and the Antarctic in the past few years. This year’s eclipse will take me to Palm Cove, Queensland; the six others I have witnessed were in locations as diverse as the Greek islands, Siberia, and a tiny power station village in rural China.”

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The “eclipse of the century,” 2009: