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  #1  
Old 06-04-2013, 12:09 PM
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Annular solar eclipse - 10 may 2013

anyone making the trip ?
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Old 06-04-2013, 12:10 PM
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is this visible from your place
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Old 06-04-2013, 12:12 PM
cyclone
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no, i'm outside the path, i would have to travel 6 hours north and the wet season is late here
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Old 06-04-2013, 12:15 PM
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h0ughy (David)
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no, i'm outside the path, i would have to travel 6 hours north and the wet season is late here
mmm well that might count me out
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Old 06-04-2013, 05:48 PM
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I hope to be going
Cyclone, is Laura that far from you ?
The eclipse is still a month away,so anything could happen to the weather
Cheers
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Old 06-04-2013, 07:21 PM
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Looking at heading to south of Newman, WA for this!
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Old 06-04-2013, 10:54 PM
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Originally Posted by Willoughby View Post
Looking at heading to south of Newman, WA for this!
I guess you mean on the Great Northern Highway somewhere near 24° 19' 10" S, 119° 42' 15" E

The idyllic position for Territorians appears to be on the Stuart Highway about 100km north of Tennant Creek at 18° 57' 58" S, 134° 03' 38" E
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Old 06-04-2013, 11:37 PM
cyclone
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Originally Posted by astroron View Post
I hope to be going
Cyclone, is Laura that far from you ?
The eclipse is still a month away,so anything could happen to the weather
Cheers
I think its a 6 hour drive, i will find out more during the week.
We are expecting some big rainfall in our area this week.
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Old 07-04-2013, 07:56 AM
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Have put in for time of work and will be making the 1900 km trip from Mackay to north of Tenant creek. Aparently there is a landmark on the highway called Churchill's Head that is on the center line of the eclipse. Its a long way to go for a 4 minute show but its on my bucket list.

Churchill’s Head, NT
18° 56′ 29″ S
134° 06′ 58″ E
Eclipse duration 4 min 18 sec

Here is a link to a google map page. http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages...leMapFull.html

Cheers Rick
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Old 08-04-2013, 07:09 PM
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Quote:
Andrew wrote:
The idyllic position for Territorians appears to be on the Stuart Highway about 100km north of Tennant Creek at 18° 57' 58" S, 134° 03' 38" E
Andrew,
Depends on your definition of idyllic. The best bead displays are at the limits esp the southern limit. Some eclipse chasers believe that you head to the center line for totals and to the southern limit for annulars. I've seen two center line annulars and they are pretty static affairs. I'm thinking southern limit this time.

Dan Fisher gave an interesting talk about why you should head to the limits for annular eclipses at the last solar eclipse conference. SPACE put all the talks online....
http://tinyurl.com/btuy358
NOTE: This video is 28 minutes long!

Tennant Creek definitely offers a sweet combination of the best weather prospects, cheapish fly/drive access via Alice Springs and an eclipse that starts with first contact on the horizon at sunrise and annularity at 16 degrees elevation.

The weather prospects deteriorate rapidly across Cape York and out into the Pacific Islands.

I've written a preview article covering the annular eclipse and partial eclipse covering Australia and the Pacific on my web site at : -

http://www.joe-cali.com/eclipses/PLA...013/index.html

Joe Cali


Last edited by OzEclipse; 08-04-2013 at 09:08 PM.
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Old 08-04-2013, 07:38 PM
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Originally Posted by OzEclipse View Post
I've written a preview article covering the annular eclipse and partial eclipse covering Australia and the Pacific on my web site at : -

http://www.joe-cali.com/eclipses/PLA...013/index.html
Joe, the link http://eclipse-chasers.com/tseCalculator.php on your page does not appear to show annular eclipses. Xavier's page http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages...c_Diagram.html does.
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  #12  
Old 08-04-2013, 08:35 PM
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they all have their idiosyncrasies

Andrew,

Both calculators are very similar. Neither are set to default to the May 10 annular eclipse. You have to select the eclipse of interest from the menu.

Bill has the default set to select the USA 2017 total eclipse. The link you posted to Xavier's page has it's default set to the 2010 total eclipse. Just scroll down to the bottom of Bill's eclipse-chasers.com page and select the appropriate eclipse path.

I know both Bill Kramer and Xavier Jubier. I'm on good terms with both - Xavier might be traveling with me in Newman so don't read anything into the link. Both calculators give equally accurate results. In fact they cross test their software to make sure results are consistent. The only reason I prefer and link to Bill's rather than Xavier's is that you can block copy the circumstances table from Bill's output but not from Xavier's.

When I'm exploring options, I prefer to use Xavier's Google Earth interactive tool. But if you copy the circumstances from that tool, it pastes everything perfectly except it strips the hrs off the event times and just pastes the minutes and seconds. I used his interactive path map as the backdrop to my sunrise referenced map.

Bill's calc lets you paste, but it's foible is that inside the path times are in local time zone, outside, they are in UT but using a 12hr am/pm clock. No problem if you are just looking up your one location but soo confusing if you are doing a large group of locations in and out of the path and across multiple time zones the way I do.

So they all have their idiosyncrasies but they are amazing tools compared to what we had 10, 15, 20 years ago. So, I'm not complaining. These guys have put in serious hours producing these resources. These tools make our planning so easy. I just understand the weaknesses and strengths and use the best features of all of them depending on what I am doing.

Michael Zeiler just released his map set tonight
http://eclipse-maps.com/Eclipse-Maps...13_May_10.html

Michael uses special versions of Bill and Xavier's calculators that generate high spatial res plotting data for his GIS software system. He produced early versions of the Newman maps for us about a month ago but there has been a lot of behind the scenes email circulating about the Newman maps trying to sort out the path refraction corrections.

cheers

Joe

PS I've added screen shots showing the eclipse selector.
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (Picture 43.jpg)
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Click for full-size image (Picture 44.jpg)
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Last edited by OzEclipse; 09-04-2013 at 09:58 PM. Reason: adding screen shots
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  #13  
Old 09-04-2013, 11:56 AM
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Hi all,

Will driving from Alice Spring to Tennant Creek the night before the eclipse advisable?

Looks like all the motels there are fully booked, and there's not many of them.

My best bet is to start from Alice Spring....


Should I go for caravans? Would be nice to get a few nights out as well under the stars...

.. and of course I'll be travelling all the way from Kuala Lumpur to Perth and later to Alice Spring!

my 2nd eclipse trip down under!
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Old 09-04-2013, 10:48 PM
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Quote:
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Hi all,

Will driving from Alice Spring to Tennant Creek the night before the eclipse advisable?
Shah, it is 500km from Alice Springs to Tennant Creek. Even with the NT's speed limits being higher than the rest of Australia that will take more than 5 hours.
Quote:
Looks like all the motels there are fully booked, and there's not many of them.

My best bet is to start from Alice Spring....

Should I go for caravans? Would be nice to get a few nights out as well under the stars...
If the motels are all booked you might see if any of the hotels have accomodation. Otherwise you could wind up sleeping in the car overnight.
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Old 10-04-2013, 05:36 AM
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at 94% mag, would one goto the centre line or southern/northern limit ?
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Old 10-04-2013, 09:12 AM
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at 94% mag, would one goto the centre line or southern/northern limit ?
See OzEclipse Joe's link to his web page a few posts back. He recommends the southern limit for this (and maybe all) annular eclipses.

That is a bit south of Tennant Creek so you might not even have to drive out of town.
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Old 10-04-2013, 09:23 AM
cyclone
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Originally Posted by mithrandir View Post
See OzEclipse Joe's link to his web page a few posts back. He recommends the southern limit for this (and maybe all) annular eclipses.

That is a bit south of Tennant Creek so you might not even have to drive out of town.
I will (if the road and weather is ok) will be doing the drive from Mareeba to the cape (QLD) but the sun altitude is much higher ( i think 27 degrees) than WA AND NT.
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Old 10-04-2013, 11:12 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mithrandir View Post
See OzEclipse Joe's link to his web page a few posts back. He recommends the southern limit for this (and maybe all) annular eclipses.

That is a bit south of Tennant Creek so you might not even have to drive out of town.

I must apologize, I made an error when I referred to the southern limit in my post. Both limits give this effect but I said southern limit because the southern lunar limb is more mountainous than the northern lunar limb resulting in brighter beads. However, southern limb and southern limit are two different things.

Here's a brain twister - and I hope I finally have this right way round........

On the sth limit on Earth you are seeing the nth lunar limb mountains graze the edge of the suns disk. North lunar limb mountains are smaller than the sth lunar limb mountains and hence produce beads that are not quite as bright. The brightness is also a function of how close you are to the limit zone - ie how much photosphere is visible. So the north limit (southern lunar limb) produces a better bead display than south limit(northern lunar limb). Both however produce a more interesting show than the center line.

Your observing site should be near but not on the limit. Because of the lunar limb, the limit is a band not a line. Dan shows results from varying distances inside the limits in his talk.

It's in two parts. I only listed the first part in my original post - I have edited that post.

http://tinyurl.com/btuy358 PART 1 [17mins]
http://tinyurl.com/coz9usu PART 2 [11 mins]

The idea is that you are in a position where the Baily Beads fire off tracing an arc around the limb. Of course you won't see the symmetrical annulus. In my post I linked to Dan Fisher's talk at the last international solar eclipse conference. It's a 28min video but explains it quite well.

For those of you still euphoric about last years total, don't believe for a second that a 94% annular is 94% of a total eclipse. It's a very different event.



Cyclone, you only need to drive about 80km north of Lakeland to get to the southern limit. So if the road conditions are suitable to get there, you'll only be an hour or so from the sealed road to get back. Being a local, you should be able to tell if rain's coming and hi-tail it back to tarmac.

If you check out my web page, you'll note that weather prospects on the east coast are not the best but if I lived in Mareeba I'd probably head to that spot on the development road north of Lakeland too.

Tennant Ck is likewise near the sth limit. You can go to the north limit but it will mean sleeping out or driving several hundred km in the dark. As I found out last year, that has its hazards. I hit an animal while night driving on my way to Cairns.

So choosing where to go is not as simple as heading for the longest duration on the center line. If you have accommodation in Tennant Creek, I'd recommend you head just a short way south but stay inside the limit a good distance.

In Newman, we're already near the north limit so that's probably the area where I'll stay. The only thing that might push me south is that the highway at the south limit is much closer to the end of the path of annularity - sun lower to the horizon.

I've added a table of contact times for Australian locations to my web page.

http://www.joe-cali.com/eclipses/PLA...013/index.html

Joe
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Old 11-04-2013, 04:46 AM
cyclone
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Cyclone, you only need to drive about 80km north of Lakeland to get to the southern limit. So if the road conditions are suitable to get there, you'll only be an hour or so from the sealed road to get back. Being a local, you should be able to tell if rain's coming and hi-tail it back to tarmac.

If you check out my web page, you'll note that weather prospects on the east coast are not the best but if I lived in Mareeba I'd probably head to that spot on the development road north of Lakeland too.

http://www.joe-cali.com/eclipses/PLA...013/index.html

Joe
I've got a 4x4 with dual tanks and Codan HF, so travelling is not a real issue.
I'm curious to know if any locals will be doing the trip ? there is no talk about anywhere !
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Old 11-04-2013, 10:37 AM
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The Townsville Group kinda forgot about it!! We are camping out near Charters Towers, so some will watch from there, I will still be in Townsville until later that day.
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