When corona light wedged in the door of several hundred million minds, the excitement it has wrought would lead these people out of their plain and humdrum life and arouse their great courage and strength for scientific exploration.

Million upon million of people living along the Yangtze River turned to the skies and witnessed the longest 21st century solar eclipse on July 22. The Yangtze basis contains a significant portion of China's vast population. On this day, astronomy fans were eager to watch a once-in-a-century celestial phenomenon. Some people even enjoyed the magnificent sight of the total solar eclipse above clouds from a special "eclipse flight", which offered them an almost perfect viewing of the romantic scene, based on a popular "Chinese mythological braggadocio, who conceived the ambition of overtaking the Sun's fleeting rays."

On this day, the huge eclipse shadow moved swiftly, caught the Sun, which soon disappeared from the "night sky" under the beams of the central star. Then, the corona was a blaze of lurid light in the "evening twilight", which lit up stars and overlooked at the meandering Yangtze River flowing eastward...

China holds one of the world's earliest celestial records of a solar eclipse from the remote Xia Dynasty more than 4,000 years ago. Although there were no timepeaces around then, the solar eclipsed was recorded into the coordinate of history anyway.

Prestigeous Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) is often credited with being the first person to look through a telescope. Four hundred years ago, his telescope and other telescopes for some years afterwards, was invented in the Netherlands by 1608 and sold across northern Europe by 1609. Nevertheless, scientific exploration was downgraded as the heretical rebellion under the role of theology in the Middle Ages.

Ninety years ago, a special project celebrated the historic 1919 eclipse expedition to the Principle Island in Western Africa led by Sir Arthur Eddington and organized by the British royal Astronomical Society. During the expedition, they accurately verified the thesis concerning the deflection of light by the gravitational field of the Sun -- a bold, forceful inference in Albert Einstein's Broad Relativity theory, and the Einstein theory of relativity was thus satisfactorily verified.

Forty years ago, on July 20, 1969, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon's surface from the Eagle landing craft and proclaimed: "That's one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind." Buzz Aldrin, the photographer, set foot on the Moon 20 minutes after Neil Armstrong gave him eternal name recognition.

Forty years later today, advances in science have ushered in the rare, unprecedented heyday by following in the footsteps of forerunners. Comet bang, Mars landing and spacecraft launching have, among other state-of-art technologies, have helped the humankind head out of the fringes of the solar system, and the solar eclipse timings are accurate to seconds.

However, there are still numerous hard nuts to crack, big or small, and great challenges lying ahead, and the road for science exploration and popularization remains protracted. Precisely from this cause that the total solar eclipse passing over some of the Earth's most densely populated regions on July 22 is of a special significance. As is known to all, a total solar eclipse is a multi-faceted experience, but one could only see this celestial phenomenon in his lifetime merely for a couple of hours.

It is precisely for this reason too that people would take more interest in getting to learn the knowledge behind the celestial phenomenon than observing the celestial phenomenon itself. So, we sincerely and ardently hope to treat kids to wonders of the outdoor and imbue them with "primitive" joy, so that they will get increasingly closer to the nature and appreciate its infinite zeal.

By People's Daily Online and contributed by PD reporter Yang Jian