The Day Before the Eclipse

Australians don't drink much coffee. Except in the food court, where there are two dispensing machines (and a couple hundred customers, but very little waiting, if any, to get to one of the dispensers), you have to ask for it and then wait.

Terminology is different. The important ones for us are:

  • Flat white = coffee with milk
  • Long/short black = black coffee, milk on the side
I have twice gotten things called "cheesecake." They not only had no resemblance to what we call cheesecake, they didn't even resemble each other. The most recent was a layer of green jello with black seeds(?) in it, on top of what I think was whipped jello, on a very thin cracker crust. Marginally edible.

Confused order of English adjectives

Paula got handed a pair of purple ears

The Pacific Explorer

Some excellent talks


Just before dawn

Waiting for dawn

Also a possibility of shadow bands

The talks have been generally very good, but both of us have been taking micro-naps during them. We just got up (at 5pm) from some rather more refreshing naps, followed by showers.

The Pacific explorer is small as cruise ships go--2000 passengers and 500 crew. It's a bit run-down. I think a large majority of us are here for the eclipse, but some are here because it's a relatively cheap cruise, from Fremantle (the port area of Perth) to Fremantle.

Our extremely experienced eclipse-chasing astronomers have been coordinating with the captain to choose the exact spot for the best viewing, which is (of course) weather-dependent. There is a peninsula just north of Lake MacLeod; depending on the weather, we would like to stop between there and the mainland. It's a sheltered area and shallow enough that the ship will be able to drop anchor. That would be great for the photographers, because the ship can be almost perfectly still. At 6pm tonight they will make the final decision whether to anchor there or to go out to sea around the peninsula, where the sea is rougher and it's too deep to anchor.

The serious experts among us have this advice about taking pictures of the eclipse: Don't. If you want to take pictures, take selfies or something like that. Enjoy the eclipse, don't waste it by fiddling with a camera. We plan to take that advice.

This will be a "hybrid eclipse"--total where we will be, but further along the Earth where it is more distant from the moon, the moon will be a few degrees smaller and the eclipse will be annular. If you look at the path of the eclipse on the Earth, it's very thin, so the eclipse will be short (60 seconds only in totality) and there will be light skies to the east and the west.

One thing that will be different from other eclipses we have seen--the birds won't suddenly get quiet. No birds here. The people, on the other hand, are expected to get very noisy.

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