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Total Eclipse of the Sun on 4 December 2002
A total eclipse of the Sun was
visible on 4 December 2002. The track of totality started at the south-east Atlantic Ocean and crossed the southern Africa. It then crossed the
southern Indian Sea and ended at the south-eastern Australia. The total phase began at 05:50 and ended at 09:12 GMT. The maximum duration was 2 minutes 4 seconds.
Naoya MATSUMOTO went on an expedition to Ceduna, South Australia, to watch the Total
Eclipse on 4 December 2002. It was cloudy until
half an hour before the second contact, but fortunately just before the contact
the Sun appeared in a patch of blue sky and he could produce the photographs
here presented. The totality was just durable for 30 seconds. He used a
Takahashi 7.6 cm Fluorite refractor (having fl=160cm) (see a photo below).
The
corona was exposed on Fujichrome TREBI 400 and this
photo was made by stacking 9 images taken during the period from 19:40:24 to 19:40:37 with exposures 1/4 –
1/1000 seconds (processed by T KUSANO). The diamond ring here was exposed for
1/500 seconds at 19:40:44 Local Time.
The
Daylight Saving Time is observed in South Australia, and hence the Local Time
here makes a 10 hour 30 minute difference ahead GMT (GMT/UTC + 10.5 hours).
Naoya MATSUMOTO
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