Peter Chappell - Viewing Log for hybrid total solar eclipse.

This eclipse was going to be a first for me, I have never seen a hybrid total solar eclipse before, they are quite rare, they will only be seven occurring in the 21st century out of 224 solar eclipses, next being in 2031, and previous one was in 2013.

The Ningaloo eclipse as it was known as comes from an Aboriginal word, would fall across the remote North West cape area of Australia near the town of Exmouth during the morning. I was part of the Astro Trails group that was based in Perth, some 1,300 kms away. As the eclipse was due to start around 10:04 (local time), this would mean an early rise of around 03:15 to catch a plane from Perth airport to Learmonth airport near Exmouth. What surprised me with the charter flight at Perth airport we did not go thru a metal detector, only show our passports to confirm who we were! The same happened on the way back to Perth later in the afternoon. When we took off just after sunrise the skies were clear but as we headed north we came to a large bank of cloud which hopefully would not be around for our eclipse date? By the time we arrived at the North West cape area, the cloud had gone, so we should have a clear sky for the event? Once off of the plane, it was about a 5 km trip to our viewing spot right beside the Indian Ocean. It is a lot warmer up here than Perth, probably another 15 ° warmer coming in at 88 ° F?

 I started setting up my equipment about 35 minutes before first contact which was due at 10:04, as I had limited weight allowance for the plane trip, I had to re plan what equipment I would bring with me. So the 80 mm refractor telescope I normally use for eclipse trips got binned and used two cameras with an 18 – 400 mm zoom lens and a 70 – 300 mm zoom lens attached to them instead, at the front end of the lens I would be using a Seymour glass solar filter and a homemade Baader filter. All this equipment was attached to two full size tripods. I had trouble getting the sun into focus as it was that bright, I had sun glasses on but had to change to normal glasses to get the focus about right? Everything was going okay until about 20 minutes before second contact and totality starts, one of the tripod mounts had become loose and the camera and lens would bounce around too much for pictures to be taken, so I decided to carry on with the one camera and take a video with my phone instead. I had planned to run one camera in video mode and the other to take pictures and look at totality with my eyes, a lot to do in only 63 seconds! When second contact happens it is totally safe to look at the Sun with no filters at all and you will see the Corona, the outer most layer of the Sun’s atmosphere which consists of plasma. With third contact (when the Moon starts to move off of the Sun) it is time to put filters back on any equipment used. While in totality I noticed Venus to the lower right with Jupiter above and to the left, did not see any stars unfortunately. As I was down under, everything in the sky is upside down to what I can view in the northern hemisphere! About another 90 minutes later at 13:02 and the eclipse was over. My next planned eclipse is to the USA next April, the last one was in Argentina back in July 2019, Had planned another in Oman in June 2020 but Covid 19 put a stop to that planned trip.

While waiting for the bus to take us back to the plane for the trip back to Perth I started to fall asleep. Heat, very early start and only being in the country for three days was starting to take its toll on me. We got back to the hotel around 20:00 that evening, best part of a 17 hour day for the eclipse, very tired from the trip but happy to have seen it.

A hybrid eclipse is when its appearance changes from an annular to total and back again as the Moon’s shadow moves across the Earth’s surface in case you were wondering?

Clear skies.

Peter Chappell