Down Under mini-OR (12/4 Eclipse and more)

by Bob Jardine


Well, it looks like this is the third brief OR on the Eclipse. I hope you all aren't bored yet. I'll throw in some stuff about the night sky as well...

I saw the Eclipse from the Outback, as Kevin did, but I was on the next paved road West of the one he was on. I had similar weather -- not a cloud in the sky, low humidity, but very windy.

The Eclipse itself was quite nice, but 20-some seconds of totality is way too short! One (small) compensation for the short totality is that it produced one thing about this eclipse that was really different: the very small shadow -- only around 35 km in diameter, I was told -- so you could easily see the "360-degree" sunset effect all around.

I did four short nights of viewing the Southern skies at night, three of them in the Outback. For those of you who have never been there, all I can say is "you guys gotta see this!". It's simply incredible: a seemingly uncountable set of nekked eye open clusters. And 47 Tuc is just not to be believed: in a 4" refractor, it looks way better (brighter) than M13 does in a 10" Newtonian. And it's easy nekked eye, much more so than any Northern glob. In fact, it wasn't even just stellar, as M13 is, at least to my eye...looked like many of the lesser globs do in a small scope, but this was with no optical aid at all! I couldn't compare with Omega Centuri, which wasn't up yet...gotta go again in the spring! However, the Magellanic "Clouds" were high overhead and very impressive; very easy nekked eye, and much bigger than I expected, even though I knew the apparent angular size.

More later, maybe, if anyone is interested. After the jet lag fades.