Total Solar Eclipse 9 March 2016

[glenc]

Where is the best place to see this eclipse?
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~jander/tot2016/tot2016.htm

The path
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/SEgoogle2001/SE2016Mar09Tgoogle.html

[doppler]

A lot of small non tourist and unihabitated islands there, you would have to do your own charter trip I guess.
I'll be watching the partial from Mackay.
Rick

[AussieTrooper]

Would have to be Indonesia. Most of it has a knack of dodging every pacific island in the area.

[OzEclipse]

The easiest access is on Sumatra or Borneo but these also have the worst weather prospects. Best weather prospects are much further east, in the North Maluku Islands near PNG. But accommodation on those islands has been tight for more than a year.

cheers

Joe Cali
http://www.joe-cali.com/eclipses

[SteveInNZ]

"Best" would depend on your budget and determination. There's a small atoll about 2 days by ship, north of Truk Lagoon (Chuuk) with relatively good weather prospects. There are also a couple of chartered (small) cruise liners that will search for clear spots around Indonesia. Any that have spaces are not economical.
Wish I'd gone to Svalbard. :)

Steve.

[BrettK]

http://en.ponant.com/Cruises/All-Cruises/Solar-Eclipse-in-Indonesia

[Willoughby]

About to book flights to Ternate. Indo locations seem a right pain in the backside to get to in regards to flight scheduling. Looking at a 14 hour layover in Denpasar and then 18 hours in Manado before a short hop to Ternate. Should be fun. :)

May book a throwaway flight from Manado to Balikpapan too incase large convection is modelled a day or two out and throws a few spanners in the works.

Is anyone here targeting east Indonesia? Was awesome chatting with some of you guys north of Tennant Creek in May 2013 for the annular event.

FYI, flights looks like it'll cost $480 return Darwin including all the internals so pretty cheap. Tiger doing some great deals too; $99 BNE<->DRW if any QLDers are thinking of coming up! Still need to sort accommodation but don't think it'll be hard... lots of places not advertised online in places like Indo.

[astroron]

Would like to go,but with the very iffy weather etc,I am saving my hard earned for the US eclipse in 2017..
Good luck anyway to all who attempt this one.
Cheers:thumbsup:

[glend]

Given all the forest burning they do up there It's probably a waste of time, and if not that the wet season.

[OzEclipse]

"Given all the forest burning they do up there It's probably a waste of time, and if not that the wet season."

"Would like to go,but with the very iffy weather etc,I am saving my hard earned for the US eclipse in 2017..
Good luck anyway to all who attempt this one."


I've attempted 14 central solar eclipses, 11 totals and 3 annulars. Of these, only 4/14 have had really good weather prospects. Ten of them had very "iffy" weather.

I made a big rookie error with my first annular and made my own cloud by observing from Niagara Falls. The water vapour over the falls condensed into local cloud with the cooling effect of the eclipse. Had I observed from 1 km away I would have seen it. Excluding this error, cloud of my own making and looking at natural cloud. Of the other 13 eclipses, I was totally clouded out once (Shanghai 2009) and saw the inner corona through hazy high level cloud(Atlantic Ocean, 2013.) All others have been clear or most of totality visible in clear patches between clouds.

Indonesia is a relatively cheap destination. Balikpapan is relatively cheap, still has plenty of available accommodation, and is a cheapish flight from Denpasar or Jakarta which in turn are cheapish flights from Australia and doesn't have impossibly bad weather prospects. The area just south of Balikpapan on the beach has reasonable weather prospects equal to Ternate.

My Swedish observing partner and I are going to Ternate. We made arrangements more than 6 months ago and even then had problems finding accommodation. Even though Balikpapan and Ternate have similar weather prospects, we know many people going to Ternate which swayed our choice of destination. I agree with Willoughby that there is probably a lot of unlisted accommodation on Ternate. We just didn't want to risk lobbing in there and not finding it.

The smaller the land mass and closer to the east coast, the better the weather prospects. So the east side of small islands are best.

I wouldn't dismiss this eclipse quite so quickly as many of you seem to be doing.

Best of luck.

Joe

[AussieTrooper]

Joe, did you get along to the Cairns eclipse?

[OzEclipse]

Yes I did. I helped a lot of people and was spread very thinly. The web report is here : -

http://www.joe-cali.com/eclipses/PAST/TSE2012/index.html

Cheers

Joe

[SteveInNZ]

Still owe you a beer Joe. :)

[OzEclipse]

Hey Steve,

Albert Pike once wrote : "What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."

2012 was exhausting but a major feel good exercise for me. Immortality & beers just a bonus.
:D
Joe