It was 25 years ago today...

[Retrograde]

25 years ago today that seven of us travelled to a small island off the coast of East Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) to view a total solar eclipse.

Present were myself, Satchmo, Bob Milne and 4 others (friends Chris, Dino, Rob and Sue) and we all witnessed totality lasting 2 mins 59 secs.

I have a couple of photos of the event (taken on Kodachrome 200 slide-film) which I've sent off to be digitized. Hopefully I will get them back in a few days and can upload them then but in the meantime here's a pic of the front-page of an Indonesian newspaper from 2 days after the event.

Edit - digitized photos finally arrived and a few uploaded:
New pics in order: The eclipse path (our observing site in yellow) , the transport used for the last part of the journey, the tiny island we observed from (Pabahanan Island near Maratua Island), partial phase, prominences and two different exposures of the corona.

[pluto]

Wow, that's really cool!
Thanks for sharing and I look forward to seeing your pics from the day :D

[Retrograde]

Thanks Hugh. I've a couple of shots taken through my little 80mm Mak which came out OK (not great by today's digital standards mind-you). It took us 3 planes and then two boats to get to where we finally observed the eclipse from so it was quite an adventure.

It's still my only successful observation of a total eclipse having missed totality up in Cairns due to cloud.

[Liz]

Sounds like a great experience Pete. :thumbsup:

I was one of the lucky ones up north for the latest eclipse, phew. :)

[Manav]

wow! Looking forward to this

[Retrograde]

Bump - new photos added above. :)

[astroron]

Some nice photo's there Pete:)
Must have been a great adventure:D
Cheers:thumbsup:

[pluto]

Excellent photos :thumbsup:

[Satchmo]

Pete- I had no memory at all that that boat we travelled for 13 hours on was so small. Makes me think of the journey of the boat people !

[Retrograde]

Thanks Hugh and Ron - yes it certainly was quite an adventure.

Mark - looking through the photos certainly brought back some memories. At least our boat wasn't terribly overloaded. Whilst it seemed like organized chaos much of the time, the Indonesians certainly tried to look after us in their own way. :thumbsup:

[niko]

what a picture postcard island!

[Retrograde]

Only until the tide went out & then it looked like this :