Hi all,
Thanks for all the kind comments.
For anyone having trouble working out why, the reason the shadow is visible for so long after the eclipse is finished is because from 25km altitude the geometric horizon is approximately 600km in both directions. The shadow's ground speed is traveling approximately 12000km/hr when the shadow is under the capsule but much faster on approach and slowing rapidly as it recedes out to sea so that it approaches very quickly, the capsule fortuitously pans with the shadow as it crosses Cape York, but is visible much longer as it heads out to sea because at the slower speed, it takes much longer to cover the 600km horizon distance. As the projection angle increases, the front edge of the umbra slows down before the trailing edge of the shadow does causing the shadow to lose its eccentricity. That's why the shadow appears to slow right down post eclipse.
We are all really stoked with the footage. Unfortunately, even the HD version on YouTube still has compression artifacts - a necessary evil.
I was talking to Catalin Beldea, the project leader on the phone in Romania last weekend. He had just sent me 4GB of uncompressed raw footage to watch on my big screen TV. Everybody involved in the project is still enjoying watching the footage and the raw footage on a big screen is even better - but also more stomach churning.
I've been busy grabbing raw HD frames from the footage but I won't release them for some time. Catalin has just filed a story for Stiinta si Technica, (Science and Technology) the Romanian Magazine who part funded the project and held first rights. It's coming out in the December issue. Catalin works as a contributing astronomy journalist/editor for them. He and I are also planning to coauthor a story in a major English language astronomical publication before we start publishing on web.
Joe