Just a few frames captured from my video camera, the real pictures will come in mid-January. Click on any one to enlarge it. - Mike
Last year, I read Fred Espenak's description: "On Wednesday,
4 December 2002, a total eclipse of the Sun will be visible from within a narrow
corridor which traverses the Southern Hemisphere
(View animation).
The path of the Moon's shadow begins in the South Atlantic and crosses into Zimbabwe
before entering northern South Africa at 06:19 UT.
One minute later, the northern third of Kruger National Park is plunged into totality
as the hidden Sun stands 42 degrees above the horizon.
Kruger National Park is likely to be one of the primary destinations for the 2002
eclipse.
A jewel of South Africa, the park is regarded as one of the finest wildlife management
areas in the world.
The center line travels across the drier part of the park, though in December the
vegetation is a lush green because of the summer rains.
Of all of the National Parks crossed by this eclipse, Kruger is the easiest to
reach and provides the greatest range of facilities."
Well - this certainly sounded tempting! But I put off making any plans.
It was the last easy to get to total eclipse until 2006, and I'm not getting any younger! And except for that infinitely memorable day in Dakar on the 1973 Canberra cruise with Jim Parkes, Ruth, Geoff, Darrell, and Paul Boulay, I'd never been to Africa. So around Halloween, my marvelous travel agent, Carole Franks (cmfranks@adelphia.net) found me a flight for 1/3 the cost I'd seen on the web, and some Google searching found me a 7-day land tour, http://www.bushbaby.co.za/solar_eclipse.htm. I left San Diego Thanksgiving evening, Thursday 28 November, thru Los Angeles and London Heathrow, arriving Johannesburg dawn Saturday. My luggage took two more days to come, but since my carry-ons had all I needed for the two nights on the planes, it was no great hardship. I slept, floated in the warm hotel pool, visited the zoo, and toured the Soweto township.
The safari left Johannesburg Tuesday morning.
The four other clients had canceled out for medical reasons, so it was just me
and the two wonderful tour guides, Pierre and Karen Duval,
in their roomy van.
We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn on the six-hour drive north from Johannesburg
to the totality band, where we stayed at the hot-springs resort
of Tshipise ("something warm").
Eclipse morning dawned with scattered clouds, which thickened into a solid wall
ahead on our right as we drove northeast toward the center line.
Not good - we turned around and caught the main road north, gaining on the advancing
clouds, stopping at the Zimbabwe border in a conveniently cleared field under an
enormous baobab tree.
Very thoughtful of them to provide tourists such expanses of open ground, but right
next to these odd endless fences of electrified barbed wire?
We spread a sheet under the baobab tree to see clearly the marvelous crescent-sun images
that formed as totality approached.
During the last few minutes before totality, thin, fast-moving clouds caught up
with us, or perhaps formed as the air cooled, but we got a fine view of the diamond
ring (last glimmer of sunlight), the inner corona, the pinpoint red prominences
(through binoculars), brilliant Venus and Mercury, then (rather sooner than I expected)
the second diamond ring flashed and totality was over, after about 1 minute and
20 seconds.
We saw no shadow bands on the ground: I believe the thin clouds were enough to
mask the phenomenon (which I've seen at only one of my five clear eclipses).
The sky surrounding the eclipsed sun was quite bright, and colorful,
very likely from light reflected back to us off of terrain and clouds 10 or 20 miles away,
outside the tiny circle of the total eclipse (less than 54 miles/87 km in diameter).
The rest of the week was spent in Kruger National Park, which is the size of the state of New Jersey. The animals roam free, the people must stay in their vehicles except at special posted get out points. At night, they lock the people up in rest camps to avoid mischief. Just a splendid holiday, I promise to get some snapshots up on my web page, www. TerraTourist. com, by mid-January. We returned to Johannesburg Monday, by way of God's Window (as spectacular as it sounds) and the 300-meter-high Drakensburg Escarpment's drop-off , graced by waterfalls that look suspiciously like Star Wars Episode II. I returned to San Diego about 6 PM Thursday 12 December; my luggage got back Saturday night.
The next accessible total eclipse is March 2006 in northern Africa, Turkey, and Russia: there is, to be sure, a total eclipse in Antarctica in November 2003, and an eclipse over the South Pacific in April 2005 that isn't total over any dry land at all, but in an annular or bright-ring phase does cross Central America. See Fred Espenaks comprehensive eclipse site on the web at http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html.
