It's been fun reading all the reports and viewing the great images. Thanks everyone!
Here's my little contribution... posted to my facebook page yesterday.
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My body is almost broken, but my mind is high as a kite after my eclipse adventure yesterday.
Spooked by cloud on the coast I went around 150 km inland from Cairns to a spot known as The Granite. West of the ranges is less cloudy if moist easterlies are blowing in from the ocean and this was the forecast for Wednesday morning.
Short version of the story: The night before I hiked to a spot just below the summit (750 m), with a ludicrous amount of gear and slept on a rock ledge (getting around 1 hour for reasons I'll describe later). At 5 am, I traversed the final 100m and started seting up the gear. A few dslrs for timelapse and 1 p&s for video. All cameras would be automated. I wanted to watch this one unhindered, no distractions. By 6am (1/2 hour to go), everything was setup and I thought I was set. But a nagging thought told me I needed to do one final test of the gear. I'd made a one line change to a script the day before and copied it to the netbook but hadn't run a test. So I started the test and nothing worked. Oh ****! After a frantic 5 minutes checking and re-checking the connections I looked at the file. EMPTY..ZERO bytes! Although the brain was dulled by lack of sleep and mild panic, I thought maybe the transfer from thumb drive to netbook had failed. Yep... the file on the thumb drive had bytes! Crisis averted!
What a view! I had around 180 degrees unobstructed, North and East. With about a minute to go and all cameras now firing, I saw the first hint of shadow in the north west. The light was changing rapidly in both quality and intensity. Every few seconds was different and you so wanted to slow things down to saver each moment. I watched the shadow race across the sky and hit the sun at 2nd contact. The next 2 minutes raced by in a flash. I spent most of the time watching the shadow change shape around that bizarre central black hole. 3rd contact hit with an explosion of rainbow coloured light. For 2 or 3 seconds the rainbow expanded in the high altitude cloud and was then overcome by brightness and the show was over....till next time!
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ps. A big thanks to all the IIS posters for sharing info prior to the event. Particular thanks to Phil Hart, Geoff Simms, Joe Cali and Alex Cherney for helping with weather forecasts, logistics, optimal exposures and light curve fitting.
Now to find some time to process all the data.
pps. Just rendered the first timelapse. Details in the vimeo description.
https://vimeo.com/53641212
Added fireworks at 2nd contact image - courtesy Adams Dam Cosmic Convergence Festival!
Added fisheye view at 3rd contact.
