Notice that the Moon already starts to "eats" up the Sun.
1998
Annular Eclipse report from Mersing, Malaysia
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This page contains my experience for the recent
annular eclipse. There are many photos here and they take time to be loaded.
Please be patient.
Please email
me your comments. Thank you very much.
Day 1-Thursday
20 August 1998
A group of
us from University Science Malaysia's Astronomical Club went to Mersing
to observe the annular eclipse. The five of us travelled by two cars from
Penang two days before the eclipse. The journey took about 8 hours of driving
time (excluding stops). We stayed at Seri Malaysia Hotel.
Day 2-Friday
21 August 1998
We wake up
at 7 am to catch the sunrise. It sulks. There are too much clouds to see
a resonable good sunrise. See the photo
and you'll know what I mean.
We had our
breakfast. Then we learned that the official site for the eclipse is at
Tanjung Sekakap, about 10km south of Mersing. It's about 10km from the
center line. We met two French at the lobby of the hotel. They joined us
most of the time after that. One of them, Olivier,
came to Mersing for his 10th eclipse observations!
Here's the photo
of George (left) and Olivier (right).
They have
friends coming over too. One of them, Millet, is 72 years old and came
for his 21st eclipse!
We also met a group of Japanese eclipse chaser. They came well prepared
with huge telescopes, powerful laptops and GPS too.
PHOTOS
At night, there
is a public talk on the eclipse by Datuk Dr Mazlan. After the talk we did
another test run at the hotel. The test soon became an observation session
when the people starts to join us. The sky was clear. We saw jupiter and
some open clusters.
Here's the image
of Jupiter taken with my CCD camera.
It was 12am
when we finally succeed to excuse ourselves for a good night sleep.
Day 3-Eclipse
Day 22 August 1998
Wake up at
3.30am! Just 3 hours of good sleep. We left the hotel and headed for the
observation site at 4.30am. We were among the very first group to be there,
other than the police!
With no time
to waste, we quickly set up our telescope, computer, CCD camera and a TV.
The telescope is a 8"SCT and I have piggyback a CCD camera fitted with
a 300mm camera lens. The CCD will show live images on the TV and at the
same time on the PC.
I can save
any images I want with a click of a button. (But alas, the images on
the PC gone kaput soon after the first contact. Luckily, I have taken many
photos using my SLR camera.)
By
6am, all the equipment has been set up. The sky is getting cloudy.
I can see the sky on the east starts to brightenen slowly.
Meanwhile,
people has also started to arrive at the site. By 7am, the beach
is already full with people. They make a long line by the seaside. Some
armed with filters, some with camera and most of them just came to share
the fun.
Our club's advisor Dr
Chong is seen busy explaining things to the public. During the entire
eclipse, I had my video CCD camera on and shows the progress of the eclipse
on the TV
to the crowd.
Here is how the sun's
image as appeared as on TV.
We miss the
first contact. We barely see the sunrise as it was hidden by the clouds.
It was only after five minutes that we were able to see the sun. But then,
the moon has already gobbled up a good part of the sun.
Notice that the Moon already starts
to "eats" up the Sun.
After that,
the sun continue to play hide-and-seek. At one time, I felt that we might
not be so lucky to see the annularity. But by 8am, the sun with the cresent
shape, starts to show itself. The clouds are getting thinner.
After hiding behind the clouds
for 30mins, the sun can be seen again.
8.15am now
everybody starts to get excited. The scenery changes quickly. The wind
stops blowing and the air is getting cooler and quieter. Everything seems
to comes to a standstill. I looked around. It's very difficult to describe
the feeling even though this is my second eclipse. (the first one in Sabah,
Malaysia in 1995). The surrounding colour changes dramatically. The light
is dimmed but it's not the same during the sunrise or sunset. Everything
seems to be grayish in colour. No wonder, one malay guy in his fifties,
I think, yesterday night at the talk mentioned that the previous eclipse
he saw in Indonesia, describing the total eclipse to be like "hari kiamat"
or the whole is coming to an end!
About 10 more minutes to go, the
sun looks like a 4 day old moon.
The clock ticks
on. The sun is now becoming the shape of a very thin letter "C". It kept
on getting thinner and thinner while the end of the "C" becomes longer
and longer and finally, in a split second, it has becomes the letter "O".
Everybody
cheers, clapped hands and shouted.
Yipee...annularity phase.
I kept one
snapping my camera through the telescope and by the time the annularity
ends 2mins and 50secs later, I have finished one full roll of film!
Here's the
photos of the entire eclipse taken at intervals.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
I have also
created the progress of the entire eclipse into a single gif files.
>>>>>Click
here<<<<<
Here's a photo of the Sun taken two weeks before the eclipse.
Soon after the eclipse, we went to develope our negatives, had lunch and prepared for another 10 hours journey home. Reach home 3am the next day!
I hope you like the photos. The photos of the Sun were taken with my 8" SCT telescope fitted with Thousand Oak solar filter. The film used is Kodak SuperClear 400ASA and the exposure used range from 1/500sec during partial stage to 1/30sec during annular stage.
