(Posted 10 November 2012) Clear skies willing and thanks to my website sponsor Extravision Australia, I will be webcasting this Wednesday’s Total Solar Eclipse live from Cairns. I will be using the iOptron Solar 60 computerized telescope system sold by ExtraVision Australia as the telescope and filter combination. I will use a webcam to upload my video of the eclipse to Ustream.tv (using the name Nightskyonline).
Hopefully by this time tomorrow night I will be able to list a start time for my webcast. I have only just arrived at my rental property in Cairns and discovered lots of palm trees in the backyard. This means an early start tomorrow morning to see if this is going to present a problem eclipse morning.
If there are too many palm trees and I have to find an alternative location, I am going to have a power problem. It won’t be the telescope (which runs off eight AA batteries) but my laptop. The battery passed its ‘use by’ date a couple of years ago (I won’t recommend a HP laptop for this reason as it happened too quickly for my liking) and I have been running it off mains power since. So I may have to do some quick running around tomorrow to find a replacement battery for my laptop. Fingers crossed.
I am optimistic about the weather. WeatherZone has revised its forecast to ‘mostly sunny’ as of the time of this post for Cairns.
Finally don’t forget to download the free solar eclipse pinhole viewer for this Wednesday’s eclipse here.
