Total Solar Eclipse

We viewed the 2006 total solar eclipse from the desert near Tobruk, Libya. We got there on the MSC Symphonia, a cruise ship chartered by TravelQuest and Sky & Telescope magazine.

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Image of the diamond ring; 0.003 second exposure using Canon 20Da, Takahashi FSQ-106, Losmandy GM8 mount. Image auto-sequenced and processed using MaxIm DL to reveal details in the inner corona (custom radial gradient mask plug-in, Curves). Full Resolution Version
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Mid-eclipse shot showing coronal streamers, 0.2 second exposure using Canon 20Da, Takahashi FSQ-106, Losmandy GM8 mount. Image auto-sequenced and processed using MaxIm DL (custom radial gradient mask plug-in, Curves).
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Mid-eclipse shot showing coronal streamers, plus inner region stretched to reveal Earthshine view of new moon; 0.2 second exposure using Canon 20Da, Takahashi FSQ-106, Losmandy GM8 mount. Image auto-sequenced and processed using MaxIm DL (custom radial gradient mask plug-in, Curves). Full Resolution Version
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Click image to watch us view the eclipse in a time-lapse movie (40 seconds, 10MB).
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Click to watch a time-lapse movie of the entire eclipse. Partial phases photographed every 5 minutes, totality photographed every 7 seconds, with varying exposure time. Includes audio track of sounds recorded during totality (80 seconds, 3MB).
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A view of me, and my photography setup. This is an FSQ-106 with a Canon 20Da, mounted on a Losmandy GM8. The tarp is there to keep my notebook computer out of the sun, so I can see the screen. It's running MaxIm DL, to sequence the shots on the DSLR camera during totality. We set up on the fringes of the group, to stay out of the madding crowds.
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Well, it looks like we're almost alone out here in the desert. In the eerie late partial phases, it looked rather like we were camped out on Mars. Wasn't much scenery out there!

In reality it wasn't nearly so lonely out there; we just set up away from the big crowds.
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This is just a small part of the huge mob of over 1,000 people awaiting the eclipse. We were brought out to the desert from the coast in about two dozen buses.

There were so many people, it was hard to find your own telescope if you wandered away from it!
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The logistics for the whole affair were quite well done, except for one little thing... they brought only five porta-potties for over a thousand people! You're looking at an hour-long lineup.
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I snapped a few pictures with a handheld camera during totality. This is a shot of the 360 degree sunset.

All images and content copyright (c) 2006 Doug George