A hard day. Got up early. We went on the link, waiting for the attitude dynamics to start, but nothing from Delta. A glitch occurred, and once again we had to rescue the day’s program. We manually oriented to the Sun through window 13 and worked on it for three orbits. I got carried away and recklessly burned my face badly, adding to the damage to my eyes.

It’s fascinating to watch the Sun set, how it deforms. First the edges become ragged, then horizontal bands appear. The Sun begins to take on a kind of fluidity — like a droplet of water in weightlessness, pulsing elastically, changing its shape. An interesting challenge was posed by an atmosphere specialist — photograph the refraction of the Sun during sunrise and sunset with long-focal-length equipment. I had to work like a sniper: several minutes before sunset, capture the Sun’s disk in the instrument’s narrow field of view, hold and track it, waiting for it to sink into the atmosphere. That’s why you stare into the furnace for the sake of the result. Right now the whites of my eyes have a yellowish tinge; when I blink, it scratches, as if sand were poured into my eyes. They’re swollen. Later I started putting an undershirt over my head, cutting one hole for an eye and tying the sleeves like a turban. That’s how I worked, but even that didn’t fully protect me — one eye still suffered. We mostly managed to pull off the day’s program, though we had every right to call for a program cancellation and be done with it.

Gazenko came on the link again. At the end of the conversation he said that their doctor is leaving for Borzhomi to organize post-flight rest.

Tolya and I drew lots for the Quasimodo mask, and I won it — or rather, calculated it. I knew Tolya would throw an odd number because he’d thrown even before, so I suggested counting from him. It worked out: he threw 5, and I threw 1. But the joke drawing — a cowboy with a woman and a horse — we didn’t draw lots for; I gave it to him.