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."

Comments

Clouds

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:Clouds

[jhoegl]

It is more amazing that someone made a bedazzler that large to bedazzle the moon.

What color did they use to bedazzle it?

I was there

[Twigmon]

I was there, it was amazing. Took a few photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151237864341768.486780.661406767

Re:I was there

[commlinx]

Nice shots, I'm down the south of the country near Hobart and it was heavily clouded and under 50% coverage but got one half-decent pic

Eclipse

Total Solar Eclipse Bedazzles Northern Australians

[Artea]

All three of them

Re:Total Solar Eclipse Bedazzles Northern Australi

[Farmer Tim]

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...

Re:Total Solar Eclipse Bedazzles Northern Australi

[WillKemp]

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.

Better pictures

[phantomfive]

I like these pictures better than the ones in the article. They do a better job showing how dark it gets outside.

Not everyone took precautions..

[ausrob]

"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

Re:Me Too.

[dackroyd]

I was probably about 4km east of you then. Cloud passed the sun with about 4 minutes to spare before totality.

Didn't get as many pics as I'd like as I was standing there in amazement trying to see if I could get my brain to believe what it was seeing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danack/8184416042/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danack/8184416212/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danack/8184416534/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danack/8184417362/in/photostream

Bedazzled?

[ddd0004]

"Hey, look a solar eclipse! Wait, why is my jean jacket now covered in rhinestones?"