Archive for April, 2007
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Solar eclipse 2006 from Turkey
April 7th, 2007 | 
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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.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Economical international commuting
It feels like I’ve been commuting between Perpignan and Belfast over the last month or so with two trips already and a third looming.Since we have places to stay in both countries, it means that our timetable is quite flexible so I’ve spent a bit of time on SkyScanner checking out the cheapest prices and coming up with some slightly peculiar routes.
Belfast isn’t really that easy to get to from here so I usually end up flying into Dublin which has considerably more choice in terms of discount flights and seems to have lower departure taxes as well which drops the prices a little bit more. The only problem is the bus up which isn’t nearly as reliable as it used to be and on Fridays it’s quite common to have to wait for as much as three hours just to get a bus with any free seats. Of course, for me, Friday is often the day with the cheapest flights as most people are leaving Ireland for France/Spain on a long weekend therefore the flights from France/Spain that day are usually a good deal cheaper than for other days. Not that the airport seems any quieter on other days: that photo was taken on a Monday evening which was a pretty busy time as you can see.
Locally, we have a choice of four main airports though the closest (Perpignan) isn’t much use for me as it only flies to England so I’d need to get a connecting flight which makes it both too complicated and, usually, too expensive. Whilst Toulouse has, for me, the image of a large international airport it’s not really much better for me as it would also require connecting flights. That leaves me with Carcassonne and Girona which generally have one flight each per day to Dublin, usually, at a reasonable price. What complicates my life at this point is that the Carcassonne flight to Dublin is at a civilised time but the one back is generally at 9am which would require an overnight in Dublin coming back and therefore makes it too expensive. The Girona flight times are pretty much at the other end of the day with the flight to Dublin arriving around 11pm most of the time (though the schedule changes now and again and it sometimes arrives in the afternoon) and coming back around 9pm. So, generally, I end up flying out of Carcassonne and back to Girona.
What surprises me is that there still isn’t a website that lets you say something like “I’d like to fly out of an airport near A around X and back to an airport near B around Y”. At the moment, SkyScanner is the closest to that in letting you see the lowest flights between two particular airports but doesn’t let you say you’d like to fly from somewhere within X miles of a given town and return to an airport a similar distance from that town.
Although you might save a few pounds on the flight prices by varying the dates of your travel, don’t forget the swinging penalty charges applied if you’re just a few kilos overweight with your luggage. At the moment, you’ve a charge per bag of EUR 12 (return) if you declare the bag online, EUR 20 (return) if you don’t but just one kilo over the 15kg per person for checked luggage and you’re looking at EUR 8 per kilo. I’m not sure if it’s commonplace but none of our carryon baggage has been weighed on any recent trips so if you think you’re a little over on the checked luggage, it might be worth trying to squeeze the heavy items into your carryon baggage.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Ice Cream Vans as an indication of attitudes about the climate
Although Northern Ireland is definitely cooler than the south of France, one surprising difference is that Northern Ireland has icecream vans at just about every possible location that you’d find crowds of people whereas France seems to have none of these.That’s indicative of quite a different attitude towards the climate in general between NI and France which we’ve seen illustrated numerous times whilst we’ve been here.
As soon as the temperature drops below around 30c over here, all the locals don their Winter coats. Not just any old Winter coat either for the coats on sale in the local shops seem more suited to Arctic conditions than the, usually, very mild Winters that we get here. Although it’s been warm enough for us to be running around in t-shirts almost all the time since March 2006 (yes, all year), the local population has been wearing their heavy coats since late September.
Perhaps the most noticeable difference that we’ve seen though is when our son was born here at the end of August. As you can imagine, it was pretty hot then (high 30s) and the maternity ward was even warmer than that. Now, I know that the rule is to wrap up babies after they’re born but with those kind of temperatures, we just put a nappy on him and nothing else. Yet, every time the nurses came into the room they insisted in wrapping him in three layers of clothing. Net effect? Well, if we’d stayed any longer he’d have been dehydrated as the sweat was just pouring out of him with all that clothing and he clearly wasn’t comfortable.
He’s still considerably behind in his vaccinations too because anytime that we’ve taken him along between roughly March and October they announce that he’s got a fever and can’t get the vaccination. Even outside that time, it’s often warm enough for him to “have a fever” so we’re lucky if we manage one vaccination per year.
So, whilst the icecream vans appear in Northern Ireland in March at perhaps 15c, you’d be unlikely to find anything similar below 25c over here.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Astronomy in the south of France: the moon with Venus
I’ve always had a bit of an interest in astronomy but I’m a bit of a warm weather astronomer hence my interest in solar eclipses which are the one astronomical event which is pretty much guaranteed to occur when the temperature is well above freezing.
However, one advantage of being in the south of France now is that the nights are generally warmer and we’re also outside the city lights so have a much clearer sky. In fact, the sky is so much clearer that the moonlight is noticeably brighter in comparison and when there’s a full moon, you could almost read with the light outside.
Anyway, that’s to introduce an occasional series that I hope to do on the sights that we see in the night sky over here which, hopefully, will be illustrated with some images though I’m still trying to work out how to take night sky photos with the digital camera so bear with me.
To begin with, here’s a nice photo of the crescent moon with the planet Venus taken in February.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.
An Australian, an Irishman and a Frenchman…
An Australian, an Irishman and a Frenchman were sitting in a pub.
Australian: Gee, it’s wet today.
Irishman: Sure is, almost as wet as we get in the west coast of Ireland.
Frenchman: You’re not French. You’re not allowed to criticise the weather in France. I’m going to start a poster campaign against you and have someone come round and smash your place up.
Australian: Wow, do you mean that the weather in France is just the same as it is here in Belfast today?
This one is specially for SuperFrenchie 🙂
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.
