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Fred Espenak / NASA / GSFC
This map shows the thin track of totality for the Nov. 13-14 total solar eclipse, as well as a grid showing the wide area of the Asia-Pacific region and Antarctica from which a partial eclipse will be visible.
More than 50,000 tourists are expected to converge on Australia for the year's only total solar eclipse on Nov. 13-14 — and I'm one of them. If you're not, don't despair: There'll be ample webcasts of the event, thanks to the magic of the Internet.
Most of the throngs will gather in Australia's northern province of Queensland, "Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef," which is already getting set for the additional crush of visitors.
"The challenge and the opportunity is that it takes place over such a short space of time ... but we're not focused on just the black spot in the sky; it's how we use the opportunity to promote the destination," Tourism Queensland's Jeff Gillies told The Cairns Post. The economic impact could amount to $75 million or more. And that's in Australian dollars.
The psychological impact can be just as stunning, even though totality lasts only a few minutes at most: When the moon fully covers the sun's disk, the skies darken and the delicate glow of the sun's corona becomes visible around that black spot.
Linda Bugbee, a tourist from Virginia who is heading to Australia to see her fourth solar eclipse, told The Associated Press that her first brush with totality "was a lot more emotional than I expected."
"Time sort of stops, but you know it's only going to last a minute or so," she said. "You sort of take the universe and the planets for granted, but when this happens, it seems so real."
It all seems so unreal for me: While Linda Bugbee and her husband will be watching the eclipse from the city of Cairns on Nov. 14, I expect to be looking up from the deck of a cruise ship off Australia's east coast. The Dawn Princess is due to find a clear patch of sky somewhere within the track of totality, which measures roughly 100 miles wide from north to south, and thousands of miles long from east to west.
The eclipse begins at sunrise in Australia's Garig Ganak Barlu National Park, and ends at sunset about 500 miles west of Chile. A partial solar eclipse will be visible across a wider stretch of the Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and South America. This video shows you how the event will develop during the day.
Post-dawn darkness is due to fall on Cairns at 6:39 a.m. AEST on Nov. 14, which translates to 3:39 p.m. ET Nov. 13. You should be able to follow the eclipse online via these webcams:
- University of North Dakota's SEMS team on Ustream.
- Panasonic Eclipse Live plans solar-powered webcast.
- Gorge Creek Orchards in Mareeba in northern Australia.
- Total Solar Eclipse from Brisbane on the Australian coast.
- Total Solar Eclipse from Oak Beach near Cairns.
- Eclipse 2012 promises a webcast that will be carried by NASA.
There'll surely be more webcams available as we get closer to the event. Please feel free to add your favorites in the comment space below. I'll fill you in on my own brush with totality after the eclipse — but for most of this month, I'll be vacationing Down Under and touring Middle Earth. Regular postings to Cosmic Log won't resume until Nov. 27. In the meantime, turn to NBCNews.com's Science and Space sections to keep on top of the news. G'day, mates!
More resources for eclipses:
- Eclipse-Maps.com
- Newcastle Astronomical Society
- Port Douglas Solar Eclipse 2012
- Destination Cairns by Daniel Fischer
- Wikipedia: Solar eclipse of November 13, 2012
- NASA: Total Solar Eclipse of 2012 November 13
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
You might be interested in the timelapse video I took of the May 2012 solar eclipse:
Seen one in Alaska, at Gilmore Creek years ago and I was amazed, When total everything went silent, it is amazing. see one if you can, and enjoy.
In August 2017, there will be one that cuts a swath across the US from Washington to South Carolina. I'll only be a few hours drive from the spot in KY with over two minutes of totality!
That's the one ! I will be 62 and will be the only one I will ever see. And that's ok because if you see one, you've seen 'em all.
And to think back in the middle ages people thought some god or deity caused this.
I'm so glad that science has proved all that nonsense irrelevant and we can now move our lives forward without the fear of superstitious fairy tales impeding our progress.
You and I may have, but have we really moved forward as a society? The majority of Americans still think a man put two of every animal in a boat and saved them from a flood and a burning bush and snakes can talk. Both Presidential candidates claim to believe a woman gave birth without having sex and that baby was God who came to Earth to die for your "sins." And one of them wears magic underwear.
This gets them going @Cappy-1911 Adam and Eve and 3 sons (Cain, Able and Seth). Cain slew Able and for his punishment he had to leave. So Cain went to the next village over and married a woman from there...What woman? What village? Where did all these people come from?
So why is it that when there is a total eclipse of the sun, the moon fits over the sun? It is not like a tennis ball over a basketball or a basketball over a tennis ball. It fits exactly? Do you think that is happenstance? No that is God!!
Nah, you just had the luck to be born on the right planet, in the right era.
The Moon is gradually receding from Earth. There was a time when it was closer and covered a greater angular diameter than the Sun. In the distant future. it will always cover a smaller angular diameter, and only annular eclipses will be possible...
are you sure bush isnt causing the eclipse??????????????????????
Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get over it, loser.
Oh, no! The moon is gonna eat the sun! Jesus, Muhammed, Moses, the Bhudda, and Hare Krishna are all p.o'd at us! Break out the crucifixes and rosaries, face Mecca, and start banging yer heads on the "wailing wall" while meditating for enlightenment! Maybe kissing the Blarney Stone will help save us! Maybe there'll be too many people in Australia and sink the nor'east corner into the ocean! At the very least we gotta take up a big collection of money for the TV preachers! That'll do the trick!
!
This is just a reminder that on 21 Dec 12 Quetzalcoatl will make his glorious return - so be sure to stock up on sacrificial goats as supplies are limited!
And remember folks, the Mayan calendar only runs out of numbers once! Don't be left alone when His Feathered Holiness makes his glorious return!
The Mayan calendar date 21 Dec 2012 has already been passed. Their Calendar is shorter than ours is now. Google it. LOL
That's the Tzolk'in, or short form. I'm talking about the Long Count calendar. Silly dilly.
Quetzalcoatl is a Nahuatl name, not Mayan. There was a similar Mayan deity, perhaps; your mistake is sort of like confusing Aphrodite and Venus, or Ares and Mars.
Yes like God and Christ...such nonsense
It is an extraordinary co-incidence that the moon should be in such an exact place to blot out the sun for humanity to see as the moon has been drifting away at only centimeters per year in the last 100's of millions of years.