| Meade Advisor Report |
Eclipse view from French Guiana
| | Jay Pasachoff | September 25, 2006 |
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| Partial phase through the trees and past the local people observing at a cliffside in Kourou, French Guiana, on the early morning of September 22, 2007 |
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The September 22nd annular eclipse was spectacular low in the sky from French Guiana. The sun rose about halfway partially eclipsed, and a half hour later we had over five minutes of annularity. A low marine layer, about a degree high, allowed us to see the partial phase without a filter for a couple of minutes, improving the photos then. By the time was 8° above the horizon and annularity began, one certainly needed a solar filter.I traveled from Williamstown, Massachusetts, via Boston, Miami, Haiti, Guadaloupe, Martinique, to Cayenne, French Guiana, on a combination of American Airlines and Air France. Because of my academic schedule at Williams, I arrived in Guiana only the night before the eclipse. I had a nice taxi and driver from the airport for the 70 km or so to Kourou, or so I thought at first, but when the old Mercedes's dashboard warning lights went on and noises and eventually smoke emerged from the hood as we drove north of Cayenne, the capital, I wasn't so sure. But my driver was able to telephone a friend who picked us up in only about 15 min, so it was only a burned-out alternator (as I learned when he drove me to the airport yesterday). |
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| Partial phase through the trees and past the local people observing at a cliffside in Kourou, French Guiana, on the early morning of September 22, 2007 |
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Anyway, Michael Gill, who runs a Yahoo-groups Solar Eclipse Mailing List, was in the same hotel, and he briefed me on a site search. We all wound up going to a rocky hill near a lighthouse on the south side of Kourou. A half hour before sunrise, there were already 100 or so locals on the hill, with a group of experienced eclipse observers including Michael Gill (UK), Daniel Fischer (Germany), Val and Andrew White (UK), Matthias Graner (Germany), and Craig Small (US) at the cliff's edge. I stationed myself a bit back, so I could see the eclipse silhouetted between some beautiful palm trees; the situation reminded me of the view at the total eclipse I saw in 1984 in Papua New Guinea at which my photo of the corona through the palm trees was on the cover of Sky & Telescope. Hosei Kitahara (Japan), whom I had met on the Air France Flight when we were on the ground in Haiti (where we didn't get off the plane), was alongside me.At 6:50, the Moon went entirely inside the solar disk, with some beautiful Baily's beads that I saw through the Nikon D100 and Nikkor 500 mm lens (the latter having been at 30 years of eclipses with me) with a newish Thousand Oaks chromium-deposited filter. I was interviewed from time to time by the local TV station, and the reporter amusingly showed me one of the ordinary Thousand Oaks filter cards stuck in front of his lens to allow them to get good images. (I was hoping he would give me a DVD the next day but he didn't bring it by.) |
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| Partial phase through the trees and past the local people observing at a cliffside in Kourou, French Guiana, on the early morning of September 22, 2007 |
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There is an annular eclipse visible somewhere in the world about every 18 months, the same frequency as total eclipses. Though the sky doesn't go dark during an annular, it isn't as dramatic as a total, but it is still very nice and well worth a trip. |
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| The annular phase photographed through a solar filter with a 500 mm lens and a digital single-lens-reflex camera. |
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Later in the day, I went on a tour of the Kourou space station, which they bill as Europe's Spaceport. It is the site where the European Space Agency, working with the French space agency, launches satellites into space using their Ariane 5 rocket. We saw a film in an auditorium overlooking the flight control room, and then took a two-hour bus tour of the site, which is about 30 x 30 km. We went by the launch pads for Ariane 4 and Ariane 5, but though Ariane 4 was fitted with its satellites for about 12 days on the launch pad, Ariane 5 now has its satellites fitted in a building and is on the launch paid for only 1 day. So it was fun to actually be in a bus on the very spot where Ariane 5 would be but it was disappointing not to see the actual spacecraft. |
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| Jay Pasachoff and the eclipse through a solar filter. |
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The next launch had been scheduled to overlap with our eclipse visit but it had been postponed. Back at the hotel, I interacted with the people from the Loral company that is putting the spacecraft together; this next launch includes a DirectTV satellite + an Australian telecommunications satellite. A Loral personnel barbecue back at the hotel the next night, at which I saw not only the people I had already met but also the director of the whole spaceport complex, a Frenchman who had supervised 30 or so launches, made a nice ending to the expedition.The next solar eclipse will be partial visible in Asia on March 17. The annular eclipse I just saw was my 43rd solar eclipse. |
| Classifications: Beginning Observing, Advance Observing, Astronomy Outreach, Meade News, General, Solar| 9/25/2006 - 0/0/0 |
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