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www.eclipse-chasers.com Gallery Report Programmer: Bill Kramer Last update: April 17 2015 |
Eclipse Chaser
(noun) - Anyone that wants to see a total solar eclipse. 
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Report
South American Eclipse
This eclipse fell during the winter months in the southern hemisphere. Dry sky conditions were reported across most of the eclipse path over land while those on the sea encountered difficult conditions. A series of reports follows:
Web page reports
Argentina report by Stephan Heinsius (German)
Paul Gauguin Cruise write up by Bill Kramer
Chile by Tora Greve (Swedish)
Reported to SEML
This is just a small selection of the reports that came in...
The group of 70+ I led from Grand American Adventures had a very successful viewing in clear, crisp conditions from the beautiful Hosteria de Vicuña in Chile on the far western side of the town looking down the valley.
After a morning spent wandering the streets of Vicuña sampling the atmosphere, singing, dancing and eating no less than 5x BBQ lambs, the eclipse itself was viewed from the hotel's tennis court.
That turned out to be a stroke of genius because the court proved the ideal canvas to catch wave after wave of intense shadow bands both before (5 minutes before, in fact) and after totality. What a sight!
(It made my white sheet seem rather pathetic!)
We didn't see the shadow coming from down the valley but were treated to two sparkling, exquisite diamond rings that, for me, was the visual highlight, though we spotted at least two prominences.
However, the real drama came from the sounds of totality. In Vicuña, police sirens went off as soon as totality commenced, the hotel's dogs barked, and then – best of all – a rather large flock of rare burrowing parrots crossed the eclipsed sun a couple of times during totality, making a huge amount of noise as they did.
All of this gave the eclipse retain a real pit-of-the-stomach sense of dread concerning whether the sun would return. A feeling I've not experienced since my first totality ...
Here's a well-written report on our eclipse experience by Greg Davies at The Telegraph, a guest on our trip (who quotes me) on his first experience of totality:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/south-america/chile/articles/total-eclipse-in-chile
And here's another from my own website:
http://whenisthenexteclipse.com/our-grand-american-adventure-to-chile-for-an-exquisite-eclipse/
From a personal point of view, the experience was also heightened by being with so many 'eclipse newbies' and helping them observe – about 30 in total. To see their reactions afterward (tears streaming down faces ... and myself also!) was as priceless as totality itself.
Many thanks to Jay Anderson for his excellent meteorological analysis, and to Xavier Jubier for his maps, in particular, the built-in PeakFinder feature ... that proved invaluable for scouting potential observation locations. Donations to his website should be hugely encouraged.
_Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes_
Jamie Carter
WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com
Joan and I successfully recorded the total solar eclipse under perfectly clear skies from the roof of our hotel, La Toja, close to the southern limit in downtown San Juan, Argentina. I video recorded Baily’s beads with a 5-inch Celestron NexStar, Orion solar filter, IOTA-VTI, and Runcam camera with the IOTA green filter for solar eclipses. From the disappearance of the last bead (2nd contact) to the reappearance of the first one at 3rd contact, totality lasted 11 seconds, just as predicted with the lunar limb and local topography corrected by Xavier Jubier’s Google Map Web site. Joan obtained two color recordings, both showing the chromosphere, one with a 4-inch telescope and the other a 500mm telephoto lens, and digital cameras; they were timed on the audio channel with 1PPS time signals generated with a GPS device that Aart Olsen built for us – many thanks, Aart. The recordings with the audio device were also calibrated with an IOTA-VTI before and after the eclipse. Philippe Lamy loaned us one of the Phocaea eclipse photometers, similar to ones that he and other French astronomers have been using at eclipses since 2010, that also recorded the eclipse at our site; they ran a few other photometers near the central line and near the northern limit. We hope that Richard Nugent near the central line and Konrad Guhl near the northern limit had similar success video-recording the beads with GPS time inserters in Chile. It will be interesting to compare with the results of several cell phone videos made around San Juan with smart phones equipped with 20x telescopes in an effort organized by Hugh Hudson (Eclipse Megamovie project). We will be interested to know if any other timed recordings were made of Baily’s beads during this eclipse.
David Dunham
Liz and I saw a beautiful 2m 15s of totality, both diamond rings, chromosphere and very obvious shadow bands. Corona had 2 large wings, the lower one thicker. Nice polar brushes.
For logistic purposes we decided not to leave the cheap hotel. We observed with a young Venezuelan couple who run the hotel. It was lovely.
Chris Malicki
My dear.old friend Bernd, his son Tobias, my wife Eva and I observed from an area close to Condoriaco, north of the Elqui Valley, 1300 m above sea level.
Near perfect conditions, just very slight haze, blue skies through fourth contact, 2:30 minutes of totality. Beautiful streamers. Prominences at six and nine o'clock.
What a show!
Matthias Graner
We had clear skies in Serena. Original plan was to drive into the Elqui Valley, but based on the favorable forecast I decided to stay near the centre of La Serena, close to my hotel. Apart from pictures, I recorded a video, including the enthusiast reactions of the crowd. After the great American eclipse of 2017, this South American eclipse was also great.
regards
Hans van der Meer
Yesterday we had a very successful eclipse intercept in a LATAM 787 at maximum in the South Pacific out of Easter Island. 8 minutes and 25 seconds of totality!. And it did not seem that long.
Multiple journalist were on board, including Guinness records, who bestowed Glenn Schneider an award for the most total eclipses (35). Just letting off steam now on Easter Island.
Joel M. Moskowitz, M.D.
We had a successful and pristine viewing from a mountaintop above Vicuna in line of sight with Cerro Talolo. My takeaways from our viewing were:
1. The shadow cone was very obvious on approach thanks to our location and the low solar elevation.
2. I specifically watched for the approaching shadow to darken the mountains in sequence that dropped off to our west but I did not see it. (We could see the length of the Elqui Valley to the haze building over La Serena about 60 km away) Instead they darkened together with no clear difference. I think that was related to the speed of the shadow at our location, more than 2.9 km/sec, or possibly the distraction of the diamond ring. I'm only human. :) The eastbound shadow was behind a hill so no chance to observe.
3. Our site was DRY and this gave for amazing clarity. The lunar limb showed some air turbulence but it was low in the sky and what you would expect. Other than that I would put the seeing between 3.5 and 4. There were no visible sunspots so it was hard to judge. We had to get off the mountain before the end of astronomical twilight so no nighttime viewing.
All in all a wonderful show. Thank you to Fred Espenak for his eclipse prediction models and to Xavier Jubier for his work putting those into google maps and to Jay Anderson for his work on the cloud statistics. Also thank you to those whose work I use but whose names I do not know. You make the chase easier for the rest of us!
Victoria Sahami, Sirius Travel
We left at 3.00am from our rented house 2 hours north of Santiago to be ahead of day trippers from Santiago, and arrived at La Higuera near the centre line at 9am. Every car had to clear rocks off the very rocky ground to make a place to park. At a rough estimate there must have been over 1000 cars (4000 people), everyone around us was Chilean. Clear sky all day except at about C1 some marine stratus began spilling over the ridge to the west just like Jay Anderson's photo, so we were pleased and surprised to learn that everyone had great success at La Serena and Coquimbo.
Poor seeing so only used 18 power on my 80mm refractor. There were only a few Baily's Beads; the first one was 3 minutes before totality. Because of the poor seeing we put file folders on the ground for shadow bands, and saw very weak shadow bands, but they would not have been seen if we had not specifically looking for them. These were only the second bands that I have seen in 10 totalities (the previous time was 1979, also a low altitude eclipse). We saw the approaching shadow outlined by sunset colors to the north and south.
Managed to pull off the Baader solar filter without losing the sun and saw the C2 chromosphere, a small prominence, and a classic sunspot minimum corona. A large double prominence soon appeared on the other limb. Quit the scope and used 10x30 image-stabilized binocs and naked eye for the last minute.
In the binocs there was a long east to west corona and polar brushes. A striking crimson arc of chromosphere and the pink (not crimson) double prominence. If memory serves, the chromosphere and prominences are not normally such a different hue.
We looked naked eye in time to see the yellow sunset color appear over the ridge below the Sun, marking the western edge of the unusually well-defined shadow. I was quite pleased with this eclipse-- saw all the eclipse phenomena and saw them well.
We left minutes after totality, as did many of the Chileans. To try to avoid heavy traffic jams, we headed north to Huasco for the night but still ran into a terrible jam at the La Silla intersection due to an accident. So we got to bed at 10pm after having arisen at 2am. (The next evening at Coquimbo we were told that after the eclipse it had taken 12 hours to drive from La Serena to Santiago, instead of the usual six.) Pleased with our selves that we hadn't tried to drive back to Santiago that night, we met our comeuppance when 2 hours south of Coquimbo we ran into the mother of all traffic jams apparently caused by folks like our selves who had "wisely" planned to avoid the anticipated traffic jams by staying up north another day. We arrived at our rental house at 2am. And remember those who were driving onto Santiago had another 2 hours to go.
We enjoyed four clear nights at our rental house in the woods and enjoyed seeing the heart of the Milky Way overhead. Fourteen southern splendors were visible with the unaided eye, the faintest being the Ara globular cluster which, if memory serves, is mag 5.7.
Alan Whitman and Dave Whalley
Succes for my Danish group exactly on the centerline outside El Chiflon in Argentine. This was my 14th total eclipse and the best ever! I have never seen so many shadow bands and for such a long period of time and both diamond rings where also the best and most beautiful ever! And with the eclipsed Sun standing above the snow covered Andes mountains - just wow! :-)
Venlig hilsen/Regards
Henrik Glintborg, Corona Adventure, http://www.coronaadventure.dk
Links to external websites
EFlight over Pacific
Pitcairn Oeno Island
Live feed eclipse - Exploratorium
List presented in random order
