2001 Expedition Planning Information

Total Solar Eclipse of June 21

Eclipse Chasers

Links at: http://www.eclipse-chasers.com/e2001.htm

The links I've included thus far include weather, live web cams, eclipse detail references, and current solar pages of interest from SOHO to the Hi-Res H-alpha network to coronagraphs.

I'd like to find better weather and satellite links if anyone knows of any good ones.

- -Bill Kramer

2001 Eclipse Site

The webportal about the first total solar eclipse of the third millennium is availible to people of all the world.

All what you would like to know you will find. All about the phenomenon, about the next eclipse of the June 21, about the observation and about the six nations crossed by the umbral path. But not only. A wonderful photogallery, movies and VRML world designed to you allieteranno your navigation.

Forum, mailing list and much more let you interact with astronomers and amateurs located all around the planet.

News, travel informations, events and lectures take you update and, for movement people, a mobile edition, readable by a WAP-enabled device, let them know the local circumstances of this eclipse.

Don't lose the first eclipse of the millennium, don't lose Eclipse2001 !

Slovakian Expedition

French eclipse expedition

For the moment:

- - Priority is EIT full resolution images, 4 bands, FR synoptic EIT

- - Priority of priorities is:

a/ 304 within 2 minutes of the totality at our site SUMBE-Angola b/ 1 image from C2- orange filter, no polarization, within 5 minutes of the same totality

The time of centrality (middle of totality) at our site SUMBE-Angola is

12:38 UT

the length of totality is 4min 30 s. or more.

We also need i/the usual observations taken +/- 14 days around the date of the eclipse and ii/ on the site, through Internet, observations from EIT taken 3 to 5 hours before the totality to decide where to put the field of view of our "high resolution" exp-ts but this is less critical.

It is planned to have images of the W-L corona from Angola immediately transmitted to France thanks to the INMARSAT station that CNES-France is making available on our site; it includes images of Planet Mars taken the night before to calibrate our high resolution exp-t. The official site of Government of Angola (www.eclipse.ao) will also presumably provide our images on their Web pages.

Best wishes,
Serge Koutchmy

Indian eclipse expedition

Dr. Ashok Ambastha
Dr. N.M. Ashok
Dr. T. Chandrasekhar
Mr. Sanjay Gosain
Mr. F.M. Pathan

We propose to carry out two experiments
(i) Coronal polarization studies;

We are planning to do polarimetry in 5303 coronal line. The cadence is limited by our ccd camera and polaroid rotation (0,60,120 degree) by stepper motor. We have done trial runs. We expect to get at least 7 polarization maps of corona.

(ii) Dynamics of the solar corona to search for for any possible oscillations.

All belong to the Physical Research Laboratory.
Dr N.M. Ashok, Dr T. Chandrasekhar and Mr F.M. Pathan are in Ahmedabad main campus, viz., Navarangapura, Ahmedabad 380009.
Dr Ashok Ambastha and Mr Sanjay Gosain belong to Udaipur Solar Observatory, of PRL located at Udaipur 313001.

P. Venkatakrishnan
Professor & Head
Udaipur Solar Observatory
Udaipur 313001 India

SHADOW BANDS: IMAGES NEEDED

This is an appeal for images of shadow bands from the June 2001 total solar e clipse, in order to promote a significant advance in our understanding of this f ascinating phenomenon. Shadow bands are often seen (by those who look down) in t he minutes before and after totality, as faint bands of light and shade racing a cross the landscape. They are caused by atmospheric turbulence interacting with the thin crescent of illumination from the nearly-eclipsed Sun. Once seen, never forgotten!

Unfortunately I will not be travelling to the forthcoming eclipse, but I woul d be most interested in receiving high quality images of shadow bands. I have st udied these for a few years, and details of my papers can be found at

My own measurements have been of the light fluctuations detected by an array of small photometers. These measurements have advanced our understanding, but no w there is a really urgent need for high resolution images. From the detailed tw o-dimensional pattern, as opposed to a few point samples, a lot more could be le arned about the atmospheric scintillation theory that explains the phenomenon.

I have seen some interesting videos of shadow bands and a few interesting pho tographs. Unfortunately, these are not very useful for the sort of investigation s that are needed because the patterns are blurred by the motion of the bands.

The requirements for un-blurred images are, unfortunately, rather severe, as the following properties of the bands indicate.

PROPERTIES OF SHADOW BANDS

Here are some salient properties of the bands, when they are visible to the e ye.

1 The ambient solar irradiance (whole spectrum) will be of order 1-10 watts p er square metre.

2 The contrast of the bands will be of order 0.1-1% over the approximate wave band 0.4-1 micron, the larger contrast values being nearer to totality.

3 The bands will move at some average of the wind speed in the lower troposph ere, typically a few metres per second.

4 Though the spacing of the bands is often estimated as about 10 cm this is a result of how our eyes respond to light variations at various frequencies. In f act there are band structures with a huge range of size, and not only perpendicu lar to the bands but along them too.

To advance the subject, an image must resolve structures as small as possible — a few millimetres would be very useful, with blurring due to band motion at no more than this same scale.

HOW TO RECORD SHADOW BANDS

Here are some suggestions of how to record the bands.

1 Obtain a screen that is matt white and unwrinkled. Cardboard a few millimet res thick would be OK. It needs to be at least a metre square.

2 Put a scale along one side of the screen, and mark the direction of true no rth.

3 Orientate the screen securely, either horizontally (H), or vertically (V), or perpendicular (P) to the line to the Sun. Write H, V, or P in a corner of the screen, in accord with the orientation you use.

4 Ensure that there are no flickering artificial light sources nearby, such as from street lamps that automatically come on!

5 Arrange your camera so that the screen just fits within the field of view, and so that the optic axis is perpendicular to the screen.

6 Watch the screen from about three minutes before second contact up to when the second contact diamond ring appears, and again from just after the diamond r ing at third contact to about three minutes later.

7 If shadow bands are seen then take as many images as you can get, preferabl y in bursts of 3 or 4 as closely spaced as possible, then another burst about 15 seconds later. Even if there seem to be no bands they might be there, either wi th too low a contrast, or moving too fast. As you have gone to the trouble to se t up, you might as well take some images.

8 Even though the band contrast might be better with a filter, I would not us e a filter because of the need for as much light as possible.

Clearly the camera needs to operate with as short an exposure time as possibl e. Film needs to be fast, certainly at least 1000 ISO and preferably faster. CCD s have the advantage of photometric linearity, but this is not as important as s peed. You can gauge exposure times from the band properties given above and from the lens speed etc of your equipment. If you use auto-exposure you should proba bly open up by 2 stops to avoid the underexposure that tends to occur with a whi te target.

You might predict that with your equipment you would only have a hope of reco rding the required detail if the wind speed were to be low, thus reducing motion blur. Well, you might be lucky — the wind speed might just be low. However , even if the wind speed were zero the bands would still not form a fixed patter n — the turbulence structure of the atmosphere that gives rise to the bands constantly changes. This has been seen at some eclipses, where the bands seem t o "boil" rather than race across the landscape. But low wind speed cer tainly helps.

Video cameras can show bands, but motion blur will be a problem, unless you h ave a camera with a very short exposure time, or unless you are lucky and the wi nd speed is low.

WHAT TO RECORD

If you mark the screen as indicated above then your images will already conta in much essential information. In addition, please record the following.

• The location of your site

• The extent of cloud cover and type of cloud

• As much data on local winds as you can gather — at very least you r subjective estimate of speed and direction at ground level and at cloud height

• Camera settings and the speed of any film used, and of any special pro cessing

• Universal Time of each exposure to the nearest couple of seconds

• The interval between exposures to a fraction of a second — the mo re accurate the better

If you do get images then please get in touch with me at the address below. I n any consequent publication full credit or joint authorship would be guaranteed .

_________________________________________
Dr Barrie W Jones
Head, Department of Physics and Astronomy
The Open University
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
UK
tel +44 1908 653229  FAX +44 1908 654192
_________________________________________

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK/Ken Phillips

Ken Phillips

Infrared continuum observations; Roseland Obs., England

From: "Fitrell, Troy D"
Subject: RE: eclipse/zambia
To: "'jmp@williams.edu'"

I thought you might be interested that the GRZ has set up a Secretariat to handle all issues regarding the eclipse. The Chairperson is Agnes Seenka, who is also Chief Executive of the Zambia National Tourist Board. I specifically mentioned duty exemptions for scientific equipment and she said that they were indeed the point of contact for that and all other issues.

They are setting up a specific web site and contact address, but until then use:

Agnes Seenka
ZNTB
PO Box 30017
Century House
Lusaka Square
Lusaka, Zambia
tel 260-1-229087
fax 225174
e-mail: zntb@zamnet.zm

You might also want to look at the zntb website which will undoubtedly link to the eclipse site.
Try: www.africa-insites.com/zambia

[November 2, 2000]

Infrared coronal spectrum, Roseland Observatory, England

An attempt was made, at the Roseland Community Observatory, Cornwall, during the 1999 total solar eclipse, to survey the infrared coronal spectrum with a view to identifying candidate lines for subsequent coronal magnetic field measurements. Cloudy conditions prevented the experiment from succeeding in this aim. However, infrared observations of the sunlight scattered through the cloud produced the unexpected observation that the infrared solar intensity fell precipitously 6.5 minutes before second contact and rose just as suddenly 6.5 minutes after third contact.

It is proposed to seek confirmation of this effect by making flux measurements in the infrared and visible during the 21 June 2001 eclipse in Southern Africa. Four Hamamatsu photodiodes will be used to make the flux measurements. Two GaAsP photodiodes will be used to measure the visible region flux and two InGaAs photodiodes will be used to measure the IR flux. One of each type will placed at the back end of a simple collimator, so that peripheral radiation is excluded, and will track the Sun during the eclipse. The other detector of each type will be used to measure the total incident radiation in its wavelength band.

-Allan Ridgeley

Master list of 2001 eclipse tours at:

http://www.bit-net.com/~pauer/eclipse99/elinks/elinks.htm