Amazing!!! Just saw all of totality from Machans beach north of Cairns airport. Clouds parted just at right time! Had rain up til 5 mins before it! So happy after coming all this way. Got some good images too!
Fantastic.
I look forward to seeing them. It was an excellent live feed on Channel 9 and ninemsn. As you say it was clear for totality and then a bit cloudy afterwards.
Decided to go south with Martin Pugh. Set up in Brampston Beach 60 km from Cairns. Got first contact right the way through to totality. Along with approx 50 others. Photos soon.
Watched from Clifton Beach - awesome! Sun moved into a small window of clear sky and we saw the whole of totality, how lucky! Lots of people all along the beach, Palm Cove would have been packed. Photos later.
I was at Holloways Beach about 15 kM north of Cairns Airport. Arrived as the sun popped its head up above the peninsula and below a band of cloud. A couple of photos and then it was gone. Sheer force of will from the thousands on the beach cleared the cloud about 5 minutes before the total eclipse. It was surreal. Had unrestricted views for about 30 minutes then cloud cover again so packed up and headed back to Cairns. Just before the highway the sun made a reappearance and I photographed the last 10 minutes of the eclipse. What an experience. Too good to be missed. Hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. Colin
Last edited by fungussface; 14-11-2012 at 10:36 AM.
Here are the 3 photos that I would like to share for now. I will be uploading more once I got a good internet line somewhere in Sydney in the next few days.
Views are from Kerribee Park in Mareeba.
It was a great adventure and a truly awesome eclipse, far surpass the one I saw back in 2006 in Turkey!
What an amazing experience!! Mrs View & I observerved from a small hill at the back of Edmonton ( Southside Cairns Suburb ) and while we started with cloud, it cleared at about 1/4 in and had clear viewing from that point, through totality and back to full exposure again.
Did anyone else notice the strange " Shimmer Shadows " on the ground either side of totality ??
Does anyone know the name of this phenomenon ?
Was it caused by the the event occurring at such a shallow angle to the horizon or was it shadows of reflected radiation from the upper atmosphere?
Thanks Mike! Yup, It's unfortunate we couldn't meet up. Time seems to fly very fast here!
A lot of last minute decision has been made yesterday evening, and we decided to go inland. The amount traffic heading North somewhat freaks us out too!
Will be flying down to Sydney tomorrow morning, before heading to Coonabarabran this weekend for a 3 night stargazing... woo hoo
Maybe we can get another chance next year for the annular eclipse!
A group of mainly Mexicans and friends had a great morning together out west on the Mulligan Highway. Was also great to be joined by a few others on IIS who had seen my post when they were looking for last minute options which added to the group atmosphere.
Skies were clear through the night, aside from just a little low cloud around midnight, so we had been fairly relaxed about the weather but at sunrise thin high cloud became visible across most of the sky and particularly in the east.
The visual view of the eclipse was spellbinding and beautiful, but the cloud has affected corona imaging a great deal. Despite all the testing (even during the night), my scripts also didn't function as they did reliably in practise, but the most important bits were ok. Happily though I didn't look at the cameras much during totality, and having seen one eclipse previously I found I could take much more in this time.
At 2nd and 3rd contact the light seemed to flicker slowly (a bit like aperture flicker in a timelapse) as well as (I think) spotting some much faster shadow bands rippling on the ground in front of me. I think having an eclipse low in the sky also benefits from the 'moon illusion' with the corona seeming larger than I remember from 11 years ago with the eclipse high in a clear blue sky.
In binoculars there were some beautiful prominences, and I was surprised by how much their position and visibility changed during the two minutes.
An award of some sort goes to the driver zooming along the Mulligan Highway (away from the sun) as though nothing unusual was happening, despite being less than two minutes from second contact with the light already very weird and fading fast. Who does that?? Were they going to turn their lights on to keep driving through totality!!?
Hope you like these few images. The corona extent is very limited and subtle detail lost, but I'm very happy with some of the prominences and details at second and third contact imaged at 1300mm. I have some nice sequences of these showing the changes over 10 seconds or so at each end.
Given the highly uncertain nature of eclipse chasing, it was a great morning!
Some amazing images in this thread - well done everyone.
After doing some more research ( on the bosses time no less ) I have determined that the Shimmer effect I referred to earlier was in fact " Shadow Bands "
As there seems to be a lack of information on this subject ( but an awful lot of theories and conjecture ) i am asking anyone who experienced these while observing today's Total Solar eclipse to record the details of their observations in my new thread
"Cairns 2012 Total eclipse shadow band observations."
Omg omg omg that was the most amazing thing I have ever seen I am still trying to take in what I just witnessed today the intensity of watching the clouds disappear just in time made it so much more exciting it was such an emotional feeling that I cried I joined up with mike salway and his family on the palm cove jetty with my hubby and drew oh my I still can't wipe this grin off my face and the after party was fantastic it was awesome to meet you all xoxoxoxoxo I can't wait to go through my pics, I'm one very happy astro chick right now
Omg omg omg that was the most amazing thing I have ever seen I am still trying to take in what I just witnessed today the intensity of watching the clouds disappear just in time made it so much more exciting it was such an emotional feeling that I cried
That truly sums it up Jen! Great photos all, congratulations! Here's a few of mine, not that I've had much time to look at what I took.
An award of some sort goes to the driver zooming along the Mulligan Highway (away from the sun)...Who does that?? Were they going to turn their lights on to keep driving through totality!!?
Yep.
I wasted about 10 seconds of the totality watching a vehicle come along the highway with headlights on towards my spot, trying to figure out if I was hallucinating or if they could really be that incurious.
What an amazing experience!! Did anyone else notice the strange " Shimmer Shadows " on the ground either side of totality ?? Does anyone know the name of this phenomenon ? Was it caused by the the event occurring at such a shallow angle to the horizon or was it shadows of reflected radiation from the upper atmosphere? Amazing stuff !!
Saw the whole thing from 9,500 feet above Maitland Downs. 3 other planes up there milling around to the south. Very quiet on the airband radio until someone said "Look to the west". Just as totality started, a bunch of fireworks erupted from around nearby Adams Dam.
From where I was sitting, the approaching shadow looked like a dark swarm with no defined edges. Just a little bit spooky, like you see on the movies.
One of the passengers saw the shimmering/tunnel effect and someone else in a western suburb of Cairns reckon they saw it too.
Here's a link to the video recorded on a mobile phone which was taped to a window looking to the west. Any shimmering effect on the video seems to be from the auto-aperture and/or auto-white balance trying to cope with the low light. Just before totality, watch for the sunlight reducing in size on the wing strut (green-tinted light is through a window, and white light is direct from the sun): https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink
Somebody said: "You don't usually see a sunset in the east, but today we did." We landed at Cairns at 7.30 and got to Palm Cove at 9.30 but it was back to normal tourist mode by then. Must have been the last person in Palm Cove wearing an IIS t-shirt. Where was the party?
Last edited by Captain Charlie; 18-11-2012 at 11:41 PM.
Reason: Add better link to video and details