A total solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's descending node of orbit on Friday, June 19, 1936,[1] with a magnitude of 1.0329.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness.

Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometres wide.

A partial eclipse was visible for parts of Europe, Northeast Africa, Asia, and northern North America.

The Evening Standard reported that the "preparations for to-day's eclipse have been going forward for the past two years", and that a British expedition led by amateur astronomer R. L. Waterfield saw "excellent atmospheric conditions" from its observation point on Cap Sunium.

[3] A United States expedition in Siberia conducted experiments on the ionosphere, with the Associated Press reporting that "indications that the earth's electrified roof, which, many miles above the surface of the globe, reflects back radio impulses, is formed mostly as a result of ultra-violet sun radiations appeared in preliminary results of the solar eclipse observations".

To offer better conditions for the 70 foreigners among them, the Central Committee of All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) promoted a policy to reduce railway and water transportation fair by 50%.

The team of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute went to the village of Bochkarev (Бочкарёв) in the suburbs of Kuybyshevka (now Belogorsk, Amur Oblast) to study the spectrum of the chromosphere and corona, the polarization of the corona and the light bending in gravitational fields proposed by the theory of relativity.

The team of Kharkiv Observatory studied the luminosity, polarization and chromospheric spectrum of the corona in Belorechensk, Krasnodar Krai, led by Nikolai Barabashov.

Interestingly, another total solar eclipse of August 9, 1896 was also visible in the coastal town Eshashi of Esashi District, which received many foreign scientists at that time.

Therefore, despite the inconvenient transportation, Kwasan Observatory of Kyoto University and a Chinese team still selected it as the observation site.

The committee was inside the Institute of Astronomy, with Cai Yuanpei being the chairman, and Gao Lu the secretary-general.

It asked for a fund of 30,000 from the government during the preparation, and received another 120,000 from the British, French and American portions of the Boxer Indemnities Committee.

Although the path of totality of this eclipse passed through northeast China, it was relatively remote located on the Sino-Soviet border, and was already under control of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state.

They initially planned to go to Orenburg Oblast with better weather conditions, but because the time was limited, they finally chose Khabarovsk.

The goals include taking images of the corona, measuring the time of the eclipse, and comparing the darkness of the sky during totality with that of twilight.