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.
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 with the scope.
