Solar eclipse - Mareeba

[RichardJ (Richard)]

Beautiful view of virtually the whole eclipse from Mareeba.
Big Big thank you to Cyclone for information and hospitality. Took pictures with Coronado PST and of totality. Need to wait to get home to process.
Thanks also to Mike Salway for IIS.

RichardJ.

[cyclone]

Hello Richard and All.

Its been a long and amazing 8 years then the last year has been so hectic !!!
Multiple webcams, weather instruments etc
Months ago i decided to build the Mt Carbine (or Lakeland) webcam,
was made in a water proof box, solar power, with Next G, the camera had low light vision, but the signal was so bad I had to use the pubs internet connection.

It was clear ,that the Mareeba webcam had a better view than Cairns, i think only once ( In the previous 3 weeks ) that the Cairns view was better than Mareeba.

What really annoys me is that Mareeba itself did not promote itself as a ideal viewing area with its short distance to Cairns. Yes, Palmer River was better, but overall (distance, toilets foods, water etc) Mareeba was the number 1 location.
If one was to Google "mareeba total solar eclipse" top of the list is my tacky old style website for info.
TRC (Tablelands Regional Council) did have a website only a couple months ago, but it was more information than anything.
I sent 2 emails (no reply) and i approached them at the Eclipse meeting at the Mareeba High School 2 Mondays before the eclipse, and i said to them.
your PDF http://www.trc.qld.gov.au/sites/defa...se%20Flyer.pdf states that the next eclipse for the TRC is in 2237, i said thats impossible because the eclipse starts at sunrise and we have a huge mountain to our east ( it delays sunrise by about 5 or so minutes) She (TRC) was not happy, and when i asked were did you get the info from, she said Cairns !!!

You see Cairns wants all the tourists, money etc for themselves, and Mareeba was too scared to stir the pot !!

I even asked mcdonalds Mareeba to open 24hrs or and early start for the 14th and they said no. I was in Mareeba at 4am and in one minute 20 cars went through the town, some were even stopped in town waiting (don't know why , big M opening ?)


I sent multiple emails to Cairns and Port Douglas websites ( the ones that were promoting the eclipse) to share my website or link to theres, i did not get a single response !! Why ? were they scared when one were to compare the webcams ?

For the ones that did travel to Mareeba from the coast, you did well and saw 95% of the eclipse.

And on a final note: all i wanted was a photo with my house and a Total Eclipse in the corner, and thats what i got............

Clear skies to all !!!!!!

[h0ughy (David)]

My eclipse experience was unfathomable – simply breathtaking and such a memorable event. There is so much to tell, so much to say about the journey. But simple things are often the best as I found out.

In summary we travelled from Port Douglas to Mareeba the night before the event and we were able to view it from Cyclone’s Farm. We travelled in a convoy and setup in the wee hours of the morning. That was when I fatefully redid the script file for the coordinates at Mareeba. My totality time went from 2m2sec to 1m31.7seconds

For some reason Solar Eclipse Maestro worked flawlessly , syncing the GPS, setting up the scripts for the 4 cameras but I should have check it better – I stuffed it up. Simple as that.

So while I thought everything was working well – it wasn’t. I was hearing the actuations – and everyone else was hearing the actuations but in actual fact I got the partials before and after and two very over exposed shots on all 4 cameras. Anyway the rest is history, I loved the experience and the view was to die for. Simply beautiful.

Al and I arrived on Sunday 11 November flying in from Newcastle via Brisbane. After an upgrade in vehicles we were cruising in an xtrail to Glengarry Van Park .

While there for the next few Days we shared this with Dennis Zambelis and family, and bumped into Chris, JJJ , H and the man himself – Fred. Another member from the NAS was there as well with his dad – hi John. Totality shot courtesy Dennis


Anyway the long and the short of it we experienced cr@ppy weather, hot humid conditions, lots of clouds, rain and hot temperatures. All of this shared with the local wildlife.

Click here to load the video

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[gary]

Hi Cyclone,

Thank you for all the hard work you put into the webcams and weather
station. It was very much appreciated.

Fabulous to hear that you were able to witness totality at Mareeba.

Sounds as if the TRC and the local chamber of commerce let a fabulous
opportunity largely slip through their fingers. Tens of millions of dollars
would have been directly injected into the local economies of Cairns,
the northern beaches and Port Douglas alone.

We stayed at Palm Cove but observed from the Mulligan Hwy some
distance north west of Mt Carbine where we also enjoyed clear skies.

Richard - hope you and the family have been keeping well and great to
hear you saw it.

Best regards

Gary & Mai

[RichardJ (Richard)]

Hi Everyone,

What a fabulous experience!!! Still on a high. We decided to go up the road to the Telstra towers just up from Skybury coffee (site suggested by Marcello). There were about 20 cars there. I took some photos with the Coronado PST and some of totality. Margaret, my wife took a shot of the eclipsed sun and umbra with her camera phone (pretty good for her first astrophoto). I was able to show the eclipsed sun to a number of people through the PST. The time seemed to pass so quickly.

After the eclipse we headed back to the farm to thank Marcello and Family. It was lovely to meet you all.

Gary & Mai - I'm so glad you got a great view.

regards,

RichardJ

[venus (Lydia)]

great images guys, am so jealous
Still happy that I got to experience what I did though...

[RichardJ (Richard)]

Hi,

I've been looking at the various Youtube videos of the eclipse. To my eye this is one of the nicest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ_8zXqskw0

regards,

RichardJ