[Peter Ward]

Quick report on the annular from Just north of Tennant Creek. Thin strato-cumulus overnight eventually burned up leaving some cirrostratus for most of the partial phases but quite clear during the annular phase.

The sun was still remarkably bright at maximum eclipse, way to bright for cameras and eyes without filters. I also need to throw some brickbats at "Hyperjuice" external batteries for MacBookPro's. If you must buy one, I'd strongly suggest 24 hour burn-in testing these pieces of S$@& prior to critical mission use!!! .

And Apollo camper vans. They do not have 240vac power as advertised. They only have 240vac if you happen to be in a location that you can plug an extension lead to...hence appliances can not be charged, due no inverter outlet, until you plug into the mains.

My modified 2008 vintage MacBook, sporting a new 256gig SSD and running Windows however worked a treat

The downside, now left with no external power and no charger, my MacBook battery powering my 6.0mp PGR FireWire 800 camera gave a very short window (30 minutes from full charge on a new battery) to setup align the scope, then capture the eclipse .

...however it all came together before the battery gave up the ghost about 10 minutes past maximum. The raw data looked good, but unfortunately I have no way of processing it until my return to Sydney later next week. My hope is the data will also look good once processed. Hope it went well for the other eclipse chasers out here!