The
big day!
After
an overnight stay at the Clare Valley Motel we motored on to Ceduna
- this was basically an all day drive - Ceduna is 800km (500 miles)
from Adelaide and not much less from Clare. Justin, our bus driver
handled it perfectly and got us to our motel on the seafront at Ceduna
early in the evening with a bit over 24 hours to go before the eclipse.
This gave us the opportunity to see the sunset and to work out where
in the sky we would need to be looking the next day.
This
investigation showed that the balcony directly adjacent to our motel
room had an excellent view of the spot where totality would occur,
so if the esplanade was too crowded we had an alternative viewpoint.
It turned out not to be necessary. Initial estimates suggested that
as many as 30,000 people would turn up for the eclipse - this is some
10 times the normal population! In fact estimates of the actual attendance
varied from 8 to 10 thousand, so it wasn't too crowded at all.
The
following day some of our team went to visit the radio-telescope
a short way inland. I gave that a miss and spent some time looking
around Ceduna, soaking up the carnival style atmosphere that prevailed
throughout the town. Two things were notable however. Firstly it was
extremely windy, and secondly there was a lot of cloud in the sky.
Some of the locals were complaining about the cold, but being English
I still thought it was quite pleasantly warm!
Given
that we had a few hours until the eclipse, and a bus with driver at
our disposal, there was the opportunity to "run". A Council
of War was duly called and the options and arguments were meted out.
In essence, the information from Damien, our resident weatherman,
was that anywhere that promised better weather was too far away, our
odds of seeing totality were 50/50, but likely to improve during the
day, and that anywhere within reach on the line of totality offered
no better probability. We decided to stay in Ceduna for better or
worse.
There
was enormous trepidation during the afternoon. There seemed to be
no let up with the wind, and the cloud cover seemed to increase. A
group of those with telescopes relocated themselves to the side of
our motel, effectively using the building as a windbreak. This didn't,
of course, help the cloud situation. That required intervention of
a more divine nature.
As
afternoon became evening things did seem to improve a fair bit, although
we still reckoned there was over 50% cloud cover. At 1840 local time
a look at the sun through eclipse glasses revealed that it had a tiny
nick in the bottom left hand corner. The moon was making its presence
known!
Over
the next hour there was plenty of opportunity to see the increasingly
eclipsed sun through more and more gaps in the cloud. Also, we noticed
that the foreshore was much less crowded than we had expected, so
we went to join the rest of the crew down there.
During
the partial phase various things happened. Firstly the temperature
dropped noticeably, probably five degrees or so. Due to the fact that
it happens so gradually one is not necessarily conscious of the fact
that it is getting dark - the eye can keep pace with the change. A
look at my camera's exposure meter gave the game away though - these
were far from being normal "daylight" exposures! The quality
of the light was also quite bizarre - most notably shadows took on
a very sharp outline giving the light a very hard quality. This is
unsurprising when it is considered that eclipse light is exactly the
same intensity as full sunlight, just coming from a smaller part of
the sky. But it is strange nevertheless.
My
photographic strategy was as follows:-
Video
Camera - on tripod with solar filter. Get day's events etc then fit
filter and get snippets of the stages of partiality. Close to totality
remove filter, replace at diamond ring and continue for some while
after third contact.
Still
Camera - some crowd shots and anything of technical interest. No shots
during totality as I wished to see this eclipse directly, not through
the viewfinder of my SLR!
This
is what I did with one variation. I'm afraid it went completely against
every instinct to have a once in a lifetime event in front of me and
an SLR hanging around my neck, so I quickly rattled off a couple of
shots in mid-totality. I'm glad I did because they turned out very
nicely and having a wide-angle lens fitted, they give a very different
perspective on the whole scene.
The
video worked superbly. The pictures were fine, and I think I got the
timing about right on the removal and refitting of the filter, which
incidentally I made that afternoon out of half an eclipse glass, some
card and some stickyback plastic! Some say I could have shown more
of the diamond rings at each end, but I think that would only have
caused the exposure system to shutdown and miss a lot of the corona
- maybe I'll try a different strategy in Egypt!
The
key thing with the video was the soundtrack. I didn't have any external
microphones with me, so I just had to let the camera pick up the sound
of whatever was going on around it. This worked very well indeed -
the atmosphere was superb with various bits and pieces of commentary
and banter being picked up followed by a huge collective "Woo-hoo"
as totality arrived followed by the expected comments of "that
was amazing" and "when's the next one?" after totality
had gone.
After
the eclipse we saw another phenomena - the crescent of the still partially
eclipsed Sun was projected onto our hotel through the trees giving
rise to some very odd shadows.
After
that the stories came out in the bar
There was the Restaurant
Manageress who didn't get out to see the eclipse because she had seven
customers waiting to be served (What??).
The
clouds came over again and we missed the final spectacle of the sun
setting still partially eclipsed, but it didn't matter because we
saw what we came for.
So
that was great? Yes and no. Yes, because we saw a wonderful eclipse
which for two of the four of us was a first, and for me more than
made up for the disappointment of 1999 in England. And No, because
I want more! I now know why people go "eclipse chasing"
and I'll be there next time!
The
question is where and when? The next possibility is the Annular eclipse
in Scotland on May 31st 2003. That would be interesting as I've now
seen both Partial and Total Solar eclipses, as well as Partial and
Total Lunar eclipses, but I really want to see another Total Solar
one.
The
next one is on November 23rd 2003, but it's only visible in Antarctica,
and then only in some of the less accessible parts of the continent.
There are aircraft flights available at great cost where you can see
the eclipse out of the window, but I'll give that one a miss I think.
The
next great Total Solar Eclipse takes place on 29th March 2006 across
much of Northern Africa, Turkey and Russia. The received wisdom is
that the far NW corner of Egypt is the place to be on that occasion,
although there's an argument that Side (p. See-day) in Turkey might
also be a good venue.
Whatever,
I'll be there, under the Moon's shadow at the next possible opportunity,
very probably in Egypt!
Postscript;
I went to Scotland to see the Annular Eclipse. We were fogged out
:-( A pity as it would have been my Fiancee's first eclipse. Well
at least she has been under the Moon's shadow! The annoyance of course
is that if we'd gone up into the mountains or just done the 20 miles
along the coast to Burghead, we'd have cleared enough of the fog to
see at least a lot of the partial phase following annularity. I beleieve
that very few people saw the annular phase itself as it was clouded
or fogged out in most locations. Here's our view...