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."
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.
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
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."
"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