[OzEclipse (Joe Cali)]

Thanks very much for all the comments. It was a fantastic if expensive place to visit. The eclipse was the highlight but basically, I wanted to visit an arctic environment so given the choice between Faroes, Svalbard or viewing from a ship or an aircraft, Svalbard was a no brainer for me and my eclipse observing partner Bengt Alfredsson from Sweden.

More images coming soon.

I am pleased with the result but wondering how much better it would have been if I had focussed better. At almost -30C, and only able to wear thin gloves or bare fingers rather than thick mitts to operate the shutter wheel and focussing, the tips of my fingers were freezing up and stinging as the fingertips tips froze solid. I did my best. We only had a 16kg checked luggage and 6kg carry on allocation on the charter flight so equipment was chosen carefully and kept to an absolute minimum. Displays slow down when they get very cold. As such the response of live view had a significant lag making it quite ineffective. This was a technically difficult eclipse. I had three levels of redundancy for power for the cameras and telescope, but I didn't anticipate the display issues.

Paul Haese:
I agree with you about changes in coronal structure. Jay Anderson was giving a talk in Longyearbyen about eclipses. In it he advised people not to bother taking close up images but to take wide field shots. He expressed the opinion that all close ups look the same and you can't tell one eclipse from another. I do like wide field shots (see the next photo I will post.)

I've known Jay for about 10 years and by reputation long before that. I respect Jay's opinion on many things but I strongly disagree with him on a few issues, this being one of them. This was my 11th totality since 1994 covering nearly two solar sunspot cylces and one and a bit saros. Every corona is unique, coronal structure varies with the sunspot cylcle. Sunspot max coronae are more symmetrical, sunspot min have long equatorial streamers and fine polar "brushes." Show me a blind picture of totality that's not too overworked from my total eclipse observational period and I think I can probably identify the particular eclipse from the coronal structure.

Peter Ward: I hope you had luck and caught some of those fantastic aurorae in Tromsø last week.

cheers
Joe