As per my 2014 Astronomy Events Calendar, we are lucky enough in Australia to have two lunar eclipses and one partial solar eclipse this year. Unlike lunar eclipses, partial solar eclipses are not safe to look directly at without the use of specialist solar filters most commonly sold by telescope shops. There are a number of ways of projecting an image of the eclipsed Sun so that you can indirectly observe it without risking your eyesight. The simplest of these is to make a pinhole in a piece of paper and hold it so that the Sun’s image falls onto a piece of white card or paper.
As a souvenir of the 29 April 2014 partial solar eclipse, I have made a solar eclipse pinhole viewer which has eclipse visibility times for a variety of locations across Australia. There are also images on the viewer showing the appearance of the Sun at maximum eclipse for these locations (Banora Point / Tweed Heads, Brisbane, Cairns, Canberra, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Perth, Rockhampton, Sydney and Townsville).
Download the free viewer (Adobe Acrobat format): Partial Solar Eclipse Pinhole Viewer 29 April 2014
We stayed up till 2:30am and looking from Inverloch surf beach to Wilson’s prom saw the aurora gently and subtlety unfold over Wilson’s prom, it was faint but still awesome and well worth it, very exciting!
Trilby,
Glad you saw an aurora last night. Hopefully we will get to see a brighter one tonight.
Did you take any photographs?
Regards,
Paul Floyd.
It was very subtly Paul, just a glow with whispy flashes into the sky, although one faint band dropped down for several seconds, which sent us into a frenzy of excitement, if that was just the prelude I’m very very excited about tonight….and will take the camera this time. Apparently CME has now hit.