Foreign Perspectives

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There’s a solar eclipse coming up this Friday morning though I’ll not be at this one or at least not at totality basically because the path is crossing a whole bunch of places that are pretty difficult and/or expensive to get to.

At our last one in Turkey in 2006 the plan was for a group of those at that one to organise a trip to see this one in Novosibirsk in Siberia but it proved to be a touch too complex to organise both travel and accommodation to such a relatively isolated spot. The most viable way seemed to be by means of the Trans-Siberian Express but I suspect that the expense of that proved to be a touch high to swing it with the rest of the family for many people.

Still, at least we’ll see a partial eclipse on Friday morning. For most of Europe that’s between about 9.30am to 11am (8.30am to 10am in the UK/Ireland) when you’ll see the sun going dark for the couple of hours as the moon passes across it.

Don’t forget that you can’t look directly at the sun for more than a very short time with your eyes and not at all with binoculars, telescopes or similar. It’s OK to view it via the screen on cameras though but don’t point the camera towards the sun too long or you’ll be needing a new one as it’ll burn out various components with the heat.

You’ll find lots more info on this on NASA’s solar eclipse site.

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I keep meaning to get out and use the telescope but my problem is that in the summer we’re just too busy and in the winter it’s too darned cold which leaves me a brief observing slot in the spring usually although I really will have to change that soon as I’ve pencilled in a couple of university astronomy courses for myself.

What equipment is best is really difficult to judge these days. It’s a popular hobby so the range is vast and who knows where to start? If you’re just starting out binoculars are the way to go and reading up on binocular reviews is pretty much essential as you can get everything from dinky opera glasses type things right up to 25×100 monsters (way too big to be useable as a starting out pair).

The big downside of having so many reviews to skim through is that your shopping list will end up rather long!

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Last year we went to Turkey to see the solar eclipse.

Whilst everyone and their dog turned up with really serious cameras and telescopes, the photo that I was most impressed with is the one that you see here.

When I’d finished taking all the photos with the Nikon F3, I thought that I’d just have a go with my little digital and this is how that photo turned out. No messing around with settings, worrying about flash, or anything in fact other than zooming in (all of x3).

However, no matter how good the photos or video you’ve seen, it’s absolutely nothing like the experience that you’ll get when seeing a total eclipse of the sun. How can I describe it? When the eclipse is nearly at the point of totality (about 10 minutes before the full eclipse starts), things start to become quite strange. Flowers close up, the birds settle down for the night and it gets quite cool. All this is happening in the middle of the day, of course. The lighting is VERY strange. It’s not like sunset as you might expect because the sky is light around the edges and only getting dark in the middle. It’s so peculiar that it almost feels like you’re sitting on some alien planet. One thing that everyone does for the eclipse is to spend a whole lot of time taking photos but when you get the chance to see one, make sure that you reserve some time to just sit back and enjoy the experience. You need to make a point of reserving time too because the whole thing only lasts a few minutes.

You can book professional tours to see eclipses but I found that the best bet was to go with those organised by the Irish Astronomical Association. The “professional tours”, by and large, tend to be run by normal holiday companies who’ve just hired someone to give a talk about the eclipse but the amateurs in the IAA are just obsessed by the whole thing and no effort is spared to make sure that the country chosen has the best weather prospects and the best spot is arranged for the day itself within that country plus you don’t have just one “expert” along, you have dozens.

The only two coming up soon in “sensible” locations are in 2008 in Russia (in the middle of nowhere) and in 2009 in northern China (not too far from Shanghai where we list apartments) which will both be quite expensive to reach and the weather prospects aren’t great (you obviously need clear sky on the day). See the NASA eclipse site for more information as to where to see them.

The final and, for some, perhaps the most important point is that a solar eclipse only lasts about 5 minutes at most and therefore ’tis best to make the eclipse trip part of a general holiday. This also makes it somewhat easier to justify the expense to the rest of the family. With that in mind, the best bet coming up is probably 2009 in China which has loads of things to see vs not really that much in the middle of Siberia in 2008.

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