ECLIPSE CO-ORDINATES
The co-ordinates of our eclipse camp where the Moon’s shadow will cross are:
16° 47' 57.8" S
145° 36' 19.0" E
TIMELINE OF ECLIPSE EVENTS
60 Minutes Before Totality
First contact - the Moon begins to cover the Sun. Over the next 45 minutes the blue sky becomes progressively darker as a twilight more rapid than usual approaches. Some animals will start to make evening sounds and act like it is approaching the end of the day.
30 Minutes Before Totality
The sky is definitely in twilight and one may notice it is getting cooler as less of the Sun is shining on this part of the Earth. Spaces between leaves in trees will act as pinhole cameras to make hundreds of little crescents under the trees—miniature pinhole images of the waning crescent Sun.
15 Minutes Before Totality
Since this eclipse takes place in the early morning, when the Sun is about 14 degrees above the eastern horizon (15 degrees south of east) this is an excellent time to look for the “Emerald Tiara” effect, first discovered by Eddie and Laurance during the Austrlian eclipse of 2002. It is a green halo-effect around the Moon’s edge that is touching the Sun, and is an atmospheric refraction effect (related to the green flash at sunset). Apparently no one had spotted this effect and reported it before 2002, but once pointed out, it has been reported dozens of times at low-altitutde partial, annular, and total solar eclipses.
5 Minutes Before Totality
A dark storm-looking form is building in the west, but with no sounds. The dark form moves upward until an orange twilight is revealed beneath it. You are looking at the Moon's shadow as it approaches at close to 1000 miles per hour.
2 Minutes Before Totality
The Sun looks like a blazing silver-white crescent. On the ground the rapid flickering of the shadow-bands can be seen. Shadow bands are the result of the sparkling of the crescent Sun in the turbulence of the lower atmosphere (related to the shimmering light streaks one sees at the bottom of a swimming pool). The shadow bands shimmer at an ever more rapid pace as totality approaches and as the turbulence from the upper atmosphere begins to participate. They resemble the shadows of a huge flock of butterflies flying in formation in front of the Sun. No one has ever gotten a good photo of the shadow bands (except one person might have recently gotten a picture of them off of clouds, but this is controversial). Could you be the first to actually photograph the elusive shadow bands?
Several Seconds Before Totality
The crescent Sun breaks into a curving string of shiny dots called "Bailey's Beads." These are the rays of sunlight skipping through the bottoms of the deepest valleys at the edge of the Moon. The dots flicker on and off and change position every half-second or so, as various lunar valleys move between us and the Sun.
One Second Before Totality
Only one shining dot remains - the "diamond ring" effect - as the Sun vanishes in the middle of the day. Animals have been making twilight sounds and at this point, go to sleep, or nest. Every reaction in nature says that it is now night time, and the whole world around you starts to rapidly cool down - sometimes by as much as 20 degrees. The world seems somehow to become quieter.
Totality
At our eclipse site, totality will 2 min, 2.1 secs, and begins just after 06:38 am on November 14th, 2012. Where the Sun once shined in the sky, there is a black disc - the Moon - covering the Sun completely. You are engulfed in twilight but there is a golden glow all around the horizon. Surrounding the dark Moon is the Sun's corona, observable only during a total solar eclipse. It is a shimmering opal-satin with streamers flowing outward, and resembles the white of a huge eye with the Moon peering down. The corona is the outer atmosphere of the Sun shining at over a million degrees!
Scarlet prominences - giant clouds of gas many times the size of the entire Earth - can be seen swirling out from the edge of the Sun, twisting and looping off the surface at thousands of miles per hour. The Moon/Sun will be in the constellation Libra, the Scales. Saturn and Venus (possibly Mercury nearer the horizon) will be visible with alpha and beta Centauri, (along with Canopus much farther to the south) will be the brightest objects in the sky. The Southern Cross will also be visible just above beta Centauri.
The Sun itself will be approaching sunspot maximum (most sunspots). This means that the corona is supposed to be somewhat elongated. The temperature will continue to drop as an extreme quiet pervades the atmosphere, as if a sub-conscious noise one had heard constantly had suddenly been turned off. You are standing in the shadow of the Moon.
The Moon is about 1/400th the size of the Sun, but is also (in our present era) about 1/400th the distance from us. Thus we have an almost exact fit of the disc of the Moon over the disc of the Sun, to make a total solar eclipse. Among many other things, this direct fit has allowed us to test the Theory of Relativity upon which the field of cosmology, (the study of the universe as a whole) is based. But this has not, and will not always be the case, as the Moon is moving away from the Earth at a rate of about one inch per year.
1 to 120 Seconds After Totality
Looking up at the Moon, there seems to be a tiny explosion at one point, but at an incredibly rapid rate it grows to engulf you! The Sun is making a dramatic reappearance! Shadow bands again shimmer all around you on the ground. The stars and planets blink out. You are surrounded by light, and the world, like a tremendously huge machine, seems to begin to start-up again. If you are quick enough, looking to the east you may see the shadow of the Moon racing off across the hills and over the horizon. The shadow bands slow in their shimmering and then fade. The animals start to get up; some making morning sounds, other very abruptly, as if they were embarrassed at being fooled. (I have seen birds come zooming out of trees, for example.)
The warmth of the sunshine and the bustle of life on Earth is back. You have been one of the privileged few people to ever experience a few moments in the shadow of the Moon, to have experienced the shadow bands, and all the other total solar eclipse effects, and to have actually seen the Sun's atmosphere. It is an awe-inspiring demonstration of the precision of the Earth's and Moon's orbits that cannot be influenced in any way by all of humankind's technology. You have connected with the universe today, and we guarantee that you will never be the same again. But be warned, the very next words following a total solar eclipse after "Wow!" which is almost always followed by, "When and where is the next one?"
