As someone currently living in the west of Ireland I can sympathise with you regarding the weather. I have not taken my astro camera out in almost two years! I was lucky enough to be based in the Sydney and Melbourne for a few years before coming back to Ireland.
Ugh, no imaging for 2 years, that's terrible!
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Originally Posted by Irish stargazer
It is a photographers paradise and it is where I was bitten by the astrophotography bug (plus a few insects)
As mentioned, attending the South Pacific Star Party is a great idea. You will meet plenty of like minded photographers there and get some good advice where to go. The site itself is very dark and I have taken some of my best shots from the site. Bring a wide angle lens for those amazing Milky Way shots. The Ice in Space astro camp at Lostock is also well worth a visit. Pick up a small tent when you arrive in Aus and you will be all set or rent a camper van.
I have a few shots taken of the ASNSW and Lostock sites and some astro objects taken from there on my Flickr site.
Since I returned to Ireland it now is mostly pictures of ducks
Having a camper van would be amazing, the freedom to go anywhere, stay anywhere (where it's allowed) I'll have to seriously look into that.
Right now I'm at the Bangkok airport waiting to board my delayed flight to Jakarta, plans have changed and I'm now going to the island of Ternate, from where I'll move to Tidore around E-day to image the event, Belitung weather forecasts were pretty bad so fingers crossed for good weather in the east instead!
Originally Posted by AHJ Photography Facebook Page
It's the 11'th of March 2016, two days after the Total Solar Eclipse of 2016, I am relaxing & still processing, in my mind, the amazing experience we just had. There are many great stories to tell about this trip to the Indonesian vulcanic islands of Ternate & Tidore to the far east of Indonesia and the spot we picked in the end, the little island of Pulau Mare, south of Tidore & pretty close to the centerline of the Path of Totality, for now here's a short account of the days up to the Total Solar Eclipse and a few pictures.
For this eclipse I teamed up with highly experienced American eclipse chaser, James McClean, he taught me a lot of things about eclipses that I had never considered, such as dark adapting a long time before totality and meticulous documenting in audio & writing of every little detail during the eclipse, James also did all of the research for the viewing & imaging site on Mare. Without James' help I might not have gotten to experience anything at all, so thanks again James!
I also teamed up with American eclipse chaser Mark Bender. Together with Terry Cuttle from Australia we climbed the volcano on Ternate, Gamalama on a recon trip on the 3'rd (Terry ultimately went back to Gamalama to image the eclipse on the 9'th, at over 1600m!) we had a great few days together.
We scouted out the site, the highest point on Pulau Mare, on March 7'th and we decided it was suitable for the event, even though the logistics were a bit troublesome for all the gear we needed, it was doable. We wanted to stay over night close to our viewing & imaging site, so we decided we would return on the 8'th with all our stuff and set up as much as we could the night before the eclipse.
March 8'th, the day before the eclipse, started of with cloudy weather and lots of rain all morning and much of the afternoon, so I was worried of course, because the spot we picked had no opportunity for any last minute plans, as it was a 1 hour trek to a mountain top, we kept our cool though and went through with our plans. We set off by boat to Mare from the south of Tidore and as we were leaving it started clearing up & soon got much hotter. 34 degrees & high humidity right after the heavy rain. We got to the town of Mare and there we recruited 4 Indonesian helpers in addition to Eko, our very helpful guide & translator. We hiked for about 1 hour to the bamboo house close to the peak where we would be staying for the night and arrived around 7-8 in the evening, when it was already very dark. We had work to do, so to ease the setup for tomorrow we hiked up to the mountain top twice with head lights to setup tripods and leave as much gear as possible for the morning after. We trekked down to the bamboo hut again and I managed to sleep a few hours. At 4:30 I went up to check if the stars were out and if the sky was clear, but not a single star was in sight, which was pretty discouraging at the time, so we went back to sleep for another hour. Soon it was time to get going and we brought some waterproof bags in case of rain, fortunately as it turns out, we never needed them.
We were back on the summit before the sunrise and it was starting to clear up, we got tracking running & tested well before first contact (when the Moon first touches the Sun) it cleared up beautifully around the Sun with nice blue clear skies and I thought I might get to image a perfectly clear Total Solar Eclipse, however just a few minutes before second contact (Totality) a very thin veil of clouds started rolling infront of the Sun, these however could not obscure the light of the Sun and we saw the inner corona throughout all of totality. We saw the planets Mercury & Venus and a cool prominence at the 9 ‘o’ clock position and a few at 12 ‘o’ clock as it was ending.
Our Indonesian friends were ecstatic and screaming in joy during & before totality, a once in a life time experience for them.
After the eclipse James & me headed back to the town of Mare and went snorkeling for an hour at some beautiful nearby corals before heading back to Tidore, an excellent conclusion to an amazing day in beautiful Indonesia.
This was an incredible experience, easily trumps my first eclipse back at home last year. Now it’s time to relax, recuperate, backup data & plan the journey ahead!
Credits: Many pictures taken of me & James were taken by Indonesian Sardi 'Eko' Marsaoly, our wonderful guide, translator & cameraman!
Hoping to visit Australia soon and get that southern sky imaged, will see about that.
Okay March is almost already half way through, likely to be able to go to Australia at the end of March. I see there's a Perth Astrofest going on right now, too bad I can't make it!
Been looking for an event to attend for early April, is there anything else interesting going on the west coast or should I head straight for the east coast?
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