What a week! I managed to travel up to Cairns this week to try see and photograph the solar eclipse.
The crowds were up in Port Douglas and looking at the forecasts it seemed to me that there were progressively less clouds going south. Using that info I decided to stay in Cairns, and on google maps scoped out the coastal areas... Decided to stay at Machans Beach and try my luck.
It rained all night before with an occasional clear sky for a short time every hour or so. That weather pattern did not give me much confidence but I still setup the 80mm refractor with the DSLR and used one of the rings , which I use to attach this scope to my SCT as a guider, to attach the HDV camera. The whole package was attached to my original 8SE single arm mount. Power came from the car and I had a 40D with a 24-105mm lens as wide/backup shots.
The morning of the Eclipse was CLOUDY!!!! BUT about 1 minute before the diamond ring effect the clouds started to part and remained parted (actually cleared up a fair bit) for the duration of the eclipse and stayed clear until about 5-10minutes after the eclipse totality finished. How lucky was I, and the 50 or so people that were in the same area.
My sister was in Port Douglas on holidays and told me that it was too cloudy to see the eclipse, they only experienced the day turning to night... So it was a good and lucky choice to go to Machans Beach.
The locals were very friendly too... Two ladies were giving us wine and made a BBQ.
Sorry about the book, here are the pictures I ended up with from Wednesday morning.
, Great shots, you can even see the solar prominences around the moon. Splendid work.
