In less than two weeks, I'll be heading for one of the most remote places on the face of the earth – Easter Island. The island is known for its unique history and ancient culture (including those remarkable giant stone heads, known as moai), and a visit would be an incredible experience at any time – but it is even more special this July. Easter Island, it turns out, is one of the few places on our planet where one can view the upcoming total solar eclipse, happening on July 11. My goal on the island will be to attempt to capture the "ultimate solar eclipse photograph," and I'll be describing my quest in a series of illustrated blog entries for New Scientist's Culture Lab website.

A solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth, with the moon's shadow falling on our planet. As the Earth turns, the shadow traces out a long but quite narrow path, known as the "path of totality." If you're willing to travel, you can see a total eclipse from somewhere roughly once every 18 months. But from any one specific location, solar eclipses are incredibly rare. This is the only opportunity anyone alive today will have of seeing a total eclipse from Easter Island. (Of course, I won't be alone there – a number of passionate "eclipse chasers," along with tourists eager to witness this remarkable event, will have the island's few hotels filled to capacity.)

I have some experience at this sort of thing, having seen three previous total eclipses. I took this photo of the total solar eclipse above Salzburg, Austria, in 1999:

This time around – if all goes well – instead of Salzburg's castle and cathedral, I'll have Easter Island's distinctive moai sculptures as a foreground. But there is still an incredible amount of work to do, as I study maps of the island and descriptions and photographs of the landscape; upon arrival, I'll have several days to scope out the perfect site -- somewhere where I can catch the eclipse, with those remarkable moai in the foreground. The moon will cover the sun for just over four minutes, which no doubt will rush by! And amid that rush, I hope to take a few moments to simply savour the spectacle with my own eyes. Of course, while I'm there I intend to capture a variety of images of the island's moai-dotted landscape, and also to do some "landscape with star-trails" astrophotography, like this image that I took a couple of years ago in Monument Valley, near the Arizona-Utah border:

The July 11 event represents a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Check here for more updates (I'll be posting links to each Culture Lab posting in the "News" section here); you can also follow me on Twitter at @danfalk for the latest developments. Fingers crossed for clear skies on Easter Island on July 11!