I was lucky enough to observe the Total Solar Eclipse under generally clear skies from the southern end of the atol of Anaa, French Polynesia.
About 40 people including locals and visitors made a 45 minute, 18 km pre dawn boat ride from the village on Anaa across the lagoon towards the southern end of the atol to set up on a beautiful sandy beach with shade and wind shelter from coconut palms and a gorgeous view across the lagoon towards the sun.
Thin scattered clouds interrupted the partial phases only briefly but stayed clear for the 2 min 59 secs of totality. Thousands of crescents on the ground under the coconut palms during the partial phases. Stunning diamond ring before and especially afterwards.
A most striking aspect was the strongly defined shadow bands clearly visible running along the white sandy beach for at least 2 to 3 minutes both before and after totality. By far the most strongly defined that I have seen at any eclipse. And an impressively long coronal streamer during totality.
Attached is a widefield image taken during totality. Canon 350D with 18 - 55mm lens at 18mm. Composite image to properly expose the corona, with 5 exposures ranging from 1/1000 sec to 1/10 sec - all at f4.5 and 400 ISO.
Eclipses are awesome, stunning and inspiring no matter how many you see. I admit it, I'm hooked. Bring on 2012!
You can see my telephoto imaging setup in the left foreground (76mm scope on an equatorial mount with DSLR controlled by laptop). More images to follow when I can get time to process the images taken through the scope.
I've started thinking a lot more about 2012 recently, this image inspires even more thought!
Beautiful pic indeed.
You could have similiar surroundings in Cairns .... on the beach with palm trees swaying around you, though no tahitian beauties.
Yes, 2010 will be here before we know it, and many of us will be armed with cameras, so need to know what settings to use.
I am writing down yours and Robs at the moment, cos when the time comes, I will be unable to find this thread.
Thanks to everyone for your kind comments.
I will be at Qld Astrofest and look forward to meeting people there.
I have a talk scheduled for the Monday about the 2012 eclipse.
I was in the eclipse zone for 2 weeks either side of the eclipse date last year and have lots of images and info on possible viewing sites, access conditions etc. and can talk about eclipse photography. I agree there are good photo opportunities for the 2012 eclipse.
I have attached 4 more images from last weeks eclipse.
All are taken with the 76mm 480mm FL (f6.3) refractor with Canon 450D DSLR on equatorial mount seen in the lower left of the image I posted first.
Three are of a sequence taken around third contact. I especiallly like the prominence in the upper left in the first image and the start of Baily's Beads in the second and third.
The other is a composite of the corona. The composite is of 5 images with exposures from 1/500th sec at 100 ISO to 1/8th sec at 400 ISO. The corona was visually stunning with two prominent long streamers and I am really pleased that I have captured several stars, something I have not done previously.
