With great fanfare we all gathered atop the Santa Monica Palisades to view the annular eclipse that was supposed to take place in January, 1991, but it was very hazy. We hoped it would clear by some miracle, but it never did.
A man went forlornly through the disappointed crowd, trying to sell “eclipse shades”.
But I have seen some good partial eclipses, with nearly three-quarters of the sun occluded. It’s very strange. You look outside and you would think it was cloudy, or just after sunset–and then you notice that in spite of the weak light, the shadows are still sharp and clear, and the sun is high in the sky.
I saw the annular eclipse in April-May of 1994. It didn’t get really dark, as mentioned above, but the light was very strange. I went outside with a paper with a pinhole in it, to see if I could cast the shadow on the ground and look at it, which I did, and then a bit afterwards it seemed like every shadow cast was eclipse-shaped–those little light and shadow areas underneath trees and bushes were all little eclipses, just for a little while. It was very strange, and very cool.
1991: Hawaii. Unsuccessful – got rained on (I was at South Point)
1994: Bolivia – one hell of a story, written by one of people in my group.
1995: India. I think I have a story on my home PC someplace. Will see if I can find it if anyone is curious.
1998: Curaçao. Timed it to attend Carnival in Trinidad just beforehand.
1999: Iran. One of my travel partners’ story is here.
Been way too busy to attend to the last two eclipses.
I saw the December 2002 total eclipse in Australia and it was marvelous. We were in the outback on private property, so we did not have to contend with crowds, buildings or anything else. It was a perfectly 100% cloudless day and we had a 360 degree horizon. The sun began to set before it was totally out of eclipse, which was pretty awesome – the crescent sun sinking into the colors of the sunset. Totality was only about a half a minute, and it took and 18-hour plane trip to get there from the New York area, but was worth every minute of it. It is impossible for me to describe the three-dimensional “hole” that takes the place of the sun. Before and after we got to visit Sydney and Adelaide and meet a lot of really nice people. I can’t wait for the chance to see another total solar.
