Eclipse Day - Climate is What You Expect, Weather is What You Get!

Following up on my previous blog entry... We were clouded out at our observing site on Hikueru and missed the totality portion -- the most important portion -- of the eclipse.  It was like going to a baseball game only to turn away and miss that winning home-run with the bases loaded!  Nevertheless i have a few pictures to share of the first partial phase of the eclipse.  In other words, the first partial phase is the period of the eclipse right up to totality when the disk of the Moon totally obscures the normally visible part of the Sun, and at which time the chromosphere, prominences and the corona of the Sun are visible.  Here are the pictures:

This picture shows the type of clouds we were dealing at our observing site with over the course of the eclipse.  The clouds moved over us at probably 30 kilometers per hour.  We would have alternating sunny and cloudy periods lasting anywhere up to maybe 15 minutes.


 

 

C1 or Contact One is where the Moon begins to cover the apparent disk of the Sun, or "take a bite out of the Sun" as some ancient myths would explain the phenomenon.  C1 was predicted for 8:37:11.1 a.m. local time.  I was able to detect it in my solar-filtered binoculars at 8:37:20 a.m.  This picture was taken shortly after that through light clouds.

Probably half of the time, if we saw the disk of the Sun at all then it was through obscuring clouds.


















Notice the sunspot towards the bottom of the disk of the Sun in this picture. "Sunspots are temporary phenomena on the surface of the Sun (the photosphere) that appear visibly as dark spots compared to surrounding regions. They are caused by intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection, forming areas of reduced surface temperature. Although they are at temperatures of roughly 3,000–4,500 K, the contrast with the surrounding material at about 5,780 K leaves them clearly visible as dark spots... Wikipedia: Sunspot.

The eclipse proceeds inexorably...

streaming through light cloud...

The focus in this picture is a little sharper and the sunspot stands out better...

Totality approaches... (the phenomenon where the apparent disk of the Sun is totally blocked by the disk of the Moon)...












But here you can see here that the clouds are moving in...

Near the time of C2 or Contact Two, which is the start of totality, i removed my solar filter on my camera and started shooting HD video.  These two last pictures are frames grabbed from the video (which i may post later).
In this first frame we can see the thin crescent Sun has broken into little beads of light called Baily's Beads, so named after Francis Baily a British astronomer of the 19th century who explained the phenomena.  The beads are caused the the rough topography of the lunar limb blocking some of the last traces of sunlight.  Finally the last Baily's Bead in the second frame will form the C2 Diamond Ring (i.e. the very last of the Sun's brilliant photosphere to be seen before its emergent on the other side of the Moon in a few minutes.)  At this time the eclipse was totally obscured by the Sun

Being clouded out... i took a few pictures at our site...  This is totality on the ground!

Turning around... i shoot a picture towards the west where the sky is brightening as the shadow of the Moon passes over us.