Slashdot Mirror
Total Solar Eclipse Bedazzles Northern Australians
Penurious Penguin writes "Tuesday at 6:38AM (2038 GMT Tuesday) thousands of Australians witnessed a solar eclipse in northern Queensland, where it was the first total eclipse in over 1000 years for the specific region. The most prominent view occurred in Cairns, while elsewhere in locations such as New Zealand, parts of Indonesia and Australia, partial eclipses were visible. Totality lasted approximately two minutes — video and photos can be seen at Universe Today. Scientists are also taking the opportunity to study both land and aquatic wildlife in affected areas."
I'd be bedazzled too, if I hadn't seen something for over 1000 years, not because of the view but because of my ripe old age.
60000 visitors to a city with a population of only 150000. There was quite a bit of chaos at the beaches.
Quite the spectacular event except that the wet tropics just entered their summer wet season and this week was the first rain in 6 months. Sadly many of the people actually missed the total eclipse due to cloud cover. However the partial phases should have been seen by all.
All I have to say is ... that's FABULOUS! I love things that are bedazzled.
uh, the 90's called? They want their stuff back. Including your terrible richard simmons impression, for some reason.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
But.. total solar eclipse... how can one... ARGH.
*mindblown*
I was there, it was amazing. Took a few photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151237864341768.486780.661406767
All three of them
There are more than three. In fact, the Bureau of Meteorology's phone lines were jammed for almost two minutes with calls from Far North Queensland (or Effin' Q as it's usually called) complaining that the sun had gone out early and blaming the southern states for confusing it with their newfangled daylight savings time. The calls stopped when it came back, of course, but they vowed to remember this at the next federal election...
Blank until
All three of them
This.
The area in question is Northern Queensland, no-one, not even the Queenslanders consider them to be fully human, let alone Australian.
Scientists theorise that most of them swam across from New Zealand.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Traveled to 12km west of Mt Carbine. No cloud problems - a very small, light cloud moved across the face of the during totality, just to made things interesting. Not many pictures, as I was more interested in seeing it.
You've got to see it.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Considering the stories I heard from my dad about the drapes fading (back in '89, I think it was), that story is far too plausible to dismiss.
There were, if I remember correctly, also worries about a population explosion due to daylight savings. The stories I hear about Queenslanders just baffle me (can anyone really be that dumb?), and I lived there for about 11 years (during which time, I heard most of the stories).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
After reading your comment, I decided to check it out. Damn. No kidding. The population of Australia is about half that of Canada; or California, the American State with the highest population. Texas comes in as second at 24 million (unless they secede, then it'll be New York at 19 million).
Are they doing alright? Since they're down under, I'd hate to think this is from having a hard time trying to hang on to the bottom of the planet.
Far north Queensland is quite densely populated compared with the Northern Territory (Queensland's western neighbour). The NT is more than twice the size of France and has a population of about 200,000.
Now i have to wait another 1000 years.
Rocket Surgeon.
that's pretty hilarious sir.
I like these pictures better than the ones in the article. They do a better job showing how dark it gets outside.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That one was a semi-joke by a politician who had the tactic of going on with gibberish for three minutes at a time so that TV news crews would have to stop and change film, which made him impossible to pin down in an interview until the days of videotape. He wasn't dumb, he said dumb things but he was an evil manipulative bastard that even set up his own fake Church group (the Logos foundation) just so that he could pretend he had God on his side after he's called the local Catholic and Anglican Bishops communists. :) Even if you automate it something is bound to not work somewhere since even leap years fuck some things up (Zune, Azure etc).
I voted for it but I'd vote against daylight savings now - too much hassle to change the time on too many computers
Considering the stories I heard from my dad about the drapes fading (back in '89, I think it was), that story is far too plausible to dismiss.
The drapes fading due to daylight savings is certainly a plausible effect which can be understood intuitively.
People coming home from work often close their drapes to help keep the heat out. During daylight savings, they would be coming home with an additional hour of sunlight than in non-DST times. Thus, daylight savings has the effect of increasing the amount of sunlight to which the drapes are exposed by by an average of one hour per day of daylight savings observed. Over many years, this very well could cause drapes to fade more quickly.
While this argument is a long way from proof of the effect, it is most certainly plausible. Perhaps those old timers weren't as stupid as you thought.
Politicians -- lol -- apparently they're the same everywhere. I feel a little better now knowing these types aren't peculiar to the U.S.; however, we seem to have more than our fair share.
Someone forgot about the international date line. It may have been Tuesday GMT, but it was Wednesday local.
"Doctors say thousands have suffered permanent eye damage from looking at total solar eclipse":
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/doctors-say-thousands-have-suffered-permanent-eye-damage-from-looking-at-total-solar-eclipse/story-fneuzlbd-1226516924022
"Hey, look a solar eclipse! Wait, why is my jean jacket now covered in rhinestones?"
If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all!
Why wouldn't you leave the drapes closed while you are at work? I'm more likely to open the drapes when I get home, because I want to be able to see out, while obviously when I'm gone that doesn't matter and keeping the house cool(-er) is more important. If I left the drapes open all day, closing them for the last couple hours of daylight to try to keep the heat out is a perfect example of closing the barn door after the horses have escaped.
The enemies of Democracy are
* If you live in Carbondale Illinois, you don't have to wait 300 years for your next Total Solar eclipse. Save your eclipse glasses and reuse them in 2021.
Staring at the sun, those silly australians.
I assume you mean expats :)
That would be Wednesday at 6:38am in Australia, if it was at 2038 GMT on Tuesday.
I'm one of only a few hundred in the world that has seen a solar eclipse from a hot air balloon.
Photos here:
http://www.hotair.com.au/blog/cairns/2012/11/07/cairns-solar-eclipse-images-video-from-a-hot-air-balloon/
My balloon was one of the yellow kangaroo sign ones, I'm pretty sure it's the lit-up one in the 10th photo there.
I was in Mexico in 1992 to view the solar eclipse outside of Cuernavaca - the longest occlusion in a very long time - almost 11 minutes if memory (always faulty) serves. I got some awesome photos including the "diamond ring" with prominences, taken with an Asahi Pentax and 400mm telephoto lense w/ 2x doubler (800mm effectively) - compliments of my, at that time, recently deceased father, who was an astro-physicist and solar corona expert. Something poetic there, I think! :-) I just wish we could have seen that event together! :-(