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The moon and the sun are very much the same size in the sky, despite their vastly different sizes and distances. In fact, the elliptical orbit of the moon around the earth results in it being sometimes larger than the sun (when it's a little closer to the earth) and sometimes smaller than the sun (when it's farther). This makes some "central" eclipses (when the moon is exactly lined up between the earth and the sun) total, and some of them "annular" (a ring of the sun's surface is visible around the moon). This eclipse was "hybrid" -- people on the surface of the earth nearest the moon saw it as total, while people a quarter of the way around the earth saw it as annular just because of the slight extra distance caused by the size of the earth. For those of us who saw it as total, the period of totality was very short, around 30 seconds.
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The day before the eclipse, the ship had a "practice run" where the captain sailed in the same direction at the same time of day that he (and the astronomers advising him) planned to sail during the eclipse itself. This gave everyone an opportunity to set up their equipment and make sure they were ready for the real thing. |
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Sunrise the morning of the eclipse. Notice all the clouds. |
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The partial phases of the eclipse have begun, visible in this nifty viewer. |
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The cruise archaeologist, Mark Eddowes, and some of Les Gauguines, viewing the partial phases. |
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A projection of the crescent through binoculars. |
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The captain putting on his viewers. |
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Another binocular projection -- totality is near. Yet it's annoyingly cloudy. |
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Ray and I were concentrating on viewing the eclipse, not photographing it. Clouds covered the sun the last minutes before totality, and some combination of ship maneuvers and cloud dissipation resulted in it becoming visible again about eight seconds before totality began. Another cruise ship guest, Barry Kierstein, took this photo which gives you a pretty good idea of how the eclipse looked: the inner corona was very bright, it was covered by thin clouds, and Venus was visible off to the right. Of course, the sky wasn't quite as dark as this photo would suggest. (Ray reframed Barry's original picture somewhat). |
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After the sun started to come back out, this eclipse flag was hoisted. |
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Everyone was in a great mood. |
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Melita Thorpe, who runs a travel agency in San Jose specializing in astronomical tours, posing with Ray. She designed the itinerary for the trip, which wouldn't have happened if she hadn't pushed Radisson to make it happen. |
