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TSE 2010 TATAKOTO, French Polynesia

Private expedition to Tikahana Motu, Tatakoto Atoll
July 3rd-July 18th, 2010


 Joe Cali on Tikahana Motu, Tatakoto Atoll


Above: Relative close-up of Joe at work during totality.  This image has been cropped from Geoff Sims' wide field totality image.   Above right : Joe packing up after 4th contact as it starts to rain.

........

Above : Joe Cali sits in the shadow of the Moon. In the picture, I am the little white dot in the middle at the bottom of the frame and a whole lot happier in the frame on the right. We were very lucky. In a sky full of cloud, we saw all of totality in perfectly clear sky except for about 30 s when we looked through thin but fairly transparent cloud.  Photos  © Geoff Sims                         


What's an eight letter word that only has four letters?  

Tatakoto of course! Who could resist wanting to see a total eclipse from a place with an exotic name like Tatakoto? A little like "Tuva or bust!"   Richard Feynman's ten year quest and last journey to Tuva and Kyzyl - a story that's always struck a chord with me.  When I first zoomed in using Google Earth, I could hardly believe what I was seeing, beautiful azure waters, coral formations, sand channels and a fringing reef surrounding the whole atoll.  When you centre Tatakoto on Google Earth and zoom out, all you can see is the big blue Pacific Ocean. It is one of the most remote places on Earth.

In October 2009, doyen of eclipse chasers, John Beattie, invited me to join a private expedition he was organizing to Tatakoto. John had found a way to Tatakoto using local contacts and regular scheduled flights.  He had not, at that time, found a way off the atoll other than staying on the atoll for the best part of 2 weeks. At the time, I thought this might be too long to spend on a small island.  If I'd known then what I know now, I would have stayed the extra week.

Around Easter time, Bengt emailed me to say that he was concerned at the lack of progress on transport. He had been watching the Air Tahiti web site and saw that they were about to release a new flight schedule. He saw a note telling ticket resellers that they could get early access to the new schedule so he contacted our group's travel agent and asked her to look for any new flights off Tatakoto just after the eclipse.


Fortunately for us, they had added a new flight, VT981 on July 13. Up until this point, Bengt and I thought that everyone else originally going on the trip had transferred to Eflight. So we asked the agent to book us seats on this new flight.  At the same time we sent John Beattie an email telling him of this new solution and asking if there was anyone left on the expedition to Tatakoto.  It transpired that he originally had nineteen people on the expedition and nine of those people remained in the Tatakoto expedition group.  They were Larry Stephens and Michelle Bales, Geoff Sims and Emily Love, Bob Pine, Bill Speare, Matthew Poulton, Bengt Alfredsson and I.  Within a few days, we were all in contact with each other and making plans.

During the period April- July 2010,  the group undertook some interesting projects/preparations

These included : -

An eye protection and eclipse education program for Tatakoto. 

I found  copy of the last census indicating Tatakoto had a population of 253 in 2007.  Larry and Geoff took on the task of acquiring 300 pairs of eclipse glasses.  Bill Speare, Matt Poulton and I, took on the task of preparing an eclipse educational brochure. Bill drafted, I edited text, did the layout and illustrations. Matt translated the English draft into French.

Production of an Observer's handbook

Before the last few eclipses, I have collated various pieces of information specific to my intended observing site. This includes things like ephemerides of any interesting events, rise and set times of Sun and Moon, magnetic declination, inclination of the coronal streamers with respect to the horizon for pre-orienting cameras.  This year I put them into the form of an observer's handbook and made this available to everyone in the group.  I  spiral bound my own and included a whole lot of diary pages  which I used as a notebook and into which  I've written an account.  

Production of a Tatakoto eclipse tee-shirt.

The tee-shirt design was based on the cover design of the handbook. After some robust discussion about the exact form of the shirt we settled on one design with two colour schemes for the lettering. Larry kindly produced a cheaper version of these using transfer technology while Geoff had some better quality full colour digital print shirts made at a slightly higher cost. These shirts were very popular and many people who saw them asked us where they could get one.

The group was subject to strict luggage weight restrictions of 20kg checked luggage + 3kg hand luggage. While I usually have a checked bag around 20-22kg, I often carry 7-8kg of camera gear in hand luggage. Group members who were not photographers and didn't need all of their 20kg allocation carried some stuff for some people who were doing photography. Our "mules" kindly carried in 1.5 kg of educational pamphlets and 2kg of eclipse shades plus some other gear while those of us with photographic equipment just carried in our own gear.  By making some compromises, I managed to fit my light-weight EQ mount, William Optic 70 f6.2 APO refractor, two SLR cameras and video gear as wel as snorkel and mask.  At check-in, my hand luggage weighed in at 3.5kg and checked luggage weighed 20.3kg, just 500 / 300 grams over but this didn't prove to be  a problem. I usually bring a hard suitcase but given the nature of this trip I decided a canvas backpack might be more useful. The backpack weighs 2.5kg, the suitcase 5kg so that freed up 2.5 kg for me. It was necessary to disassemble my telescope mount completely (something it is designed for) so that it took up less room and could be packed more robustly.  I had 5 days on Tatakoto before the eclipse to reassemble it.


I arrived in Tahiti at midnight on Saturday the 3rd July, two days before the group flew to Tatakoto. Geoff and Emily flew in from Sydney on the same flight. Others in the group drifted in over the next two days.  We left the hotel at 6am on Tuesday July 6th for the airport to get our flight to Tatakoto. Getting through check-in at the airport was a bit of a rush but we were finally safely on flight VT981 to Tatakoto.  Doesn't sound like a big deal but this weekly flight was the ONLY flight that could get us there and if anything had gone wrong, we had no other way to get to the atoll.  The flight to Tatakoto must have flown within the eclipse path because we flew over or near many of the atolls that were in the path. Our arrival at Tatakoto was both friendly but also more formal than we were expecting.  We were greeted by the Mayor.  We were later to discover that before our arrival, there had been possibly been only two or three tourists ever visit the island.  Geoff, Emily and I were the first Australians to visit and Bengt the first Swede.  

   

Left : Flying out of Tahiti     Centre :  Flying over Hikueru     Right : Musicians at Tatakoto airport

We enjoyed five wonderful days of Polynesian hospitality before the eclipse.  Meals were a real affair.  The Voirin family are wonderful cooks and the seafood was so fresh it was still wriggling as it hit the plate.  Madeleine created a beautiful open air dining area. It had thatched roof made from palm leaves and the interior was decorated by woven palm leaves or with shells or other natural materials.  It took Madeleine and her family several months to create it.  It will last a long time and her friends and neighbours are all jealous now and want to make one for themselves. During this time we were given tours of the island and we conducted a site survey and sight seeing trip out to the motus. Motus are small sand islands separated by tidal channels that fill and drain the lagoon. Two of these are owned by our hosts, the Voirin family and we were offered the use of either one of our choosing for the eclipse. 


Upon seeing the first one, we were not too keen. Though the outlook was attractive, it was very exposed to the strong south-westerly winds that predominate at this time of year. Our equipment would have been shaken by these winds. 

The boatmen, Christian and Michel, next took us to Tikahana Motu. Our jaws dropped as we approached. This was more like it.  Thick stands of coconut palms protected us from prevailing winds while allowing virtually unobstructed views to the east, north and west. The beach looked out onto the  clearest azure blue water and there was a wonderful reef for snorkeling. We quickly decided that we would like to observe from here.  The Motu was more than 9km from the "marina" at Tumukuru and navigating through the coral reefs was slow at times so the trip there took more than an hour. This was not ideal for eclipse morning so we took the boats a couple of kilometres straight across to the north shore of the lagoon and moored the powerboats there just 10 minutes from the Motu. Christian called Madeleine to arrange a pick up.  Madeleine arrived in the minibus and collected us.

On our return to the house we talked more about observing plans.  Bill was feeling a bit sick and decided to stay at the house. Bob offered to stay with Bill since he wanted to be around the locals for the eclipse anyway. Larry had an EQ2 mounting for his telescope/camera gear and didn't fancy transporting it in a boat so he and Michelle decided to observe from the north facing beach on the main part of the island not far from where the boats were moored. My EQ mount can be separated into two sub-assemblies easily transported in my waterproof canvas backpack along with all my camera gear and telescope OTA so I decided to go to the Motu as did Geoff, Emily, Bengt and Matt whose equipment was much simpler to transport than mine. We discussed the arrangements with Madeleine over dinner. She very generously offered to take us to the mooring departing the house at 4:00 am. We could leave by boat as soon as there was enough light to see the submerged reefs.


Before dinner I gave my telescope a quick field test.  All OK. When we were called for dinner, I put the power pack into a bag along with assorted tools on the table in my 'cabana.' While others took the beds inside the house, I took a bed  surrounded by curtains on the veranda that was nicknamed 'Joe's Cabana.'  When I returned from dinner, I found that I'd managed to place the power pack in such a way that it shorted with the help of tools and melted the contacts. It was useless and that was probably the end of my motor drive for this eclipse. Note to self -  fully sealed power pack for next time!


I awoke almost every hour through the night worried that I'd slept in. At 3:30, bleary eyed and tired I gave up and got up to get ready for our 4:00am departure. Bengt, good friend and buddy that he is, snapped this picture of me on the left as I was rubbing my tired eyes.  Bill woke feeling much better and decided to come to the Motu with us.  Bob stuck to his plan of seeing it from the village. At 4am we set off in two SUV's for the mooring. It was raining lightly as we departed.


Madeleine left us at the moored boats and took Larry and Michelle to the north beach. After that she returned to town to shuttle other observers around the island.  The rain continued as we waited for first light.  We needed some light so we could navigate the submerged coral reefs in the lagoon. 

We arrived at Tikahana at about 5:50am.  As we approached we saw that Xavier's Eclipse City group had camped the night on the neighbouring motu. I felt sorry for them.  It had been a windy and wet night.  After all that they had to watch us come in and set up in their line of sight (foreground). It's just one of those things, we didn't know they would be there when we chose the motu.


[Photo right]  After the rainshower passed us heading west the Sun struck the rain at the right angle to form this wonderful double spectrum rainbow.
 



[Photo above]  The Eclipse City tents are visible in the distance. Geoff and Emily are the small dots about
100m down the beach.
The blue water in the lagoon is about 2m deep and the darker areas are reef.  Sky
to the west looks bad but that cloud has passed us and the Sun is in the clear to the east.  


Geoff and Emily walked down to the west end of the beach and decided to set up there. Geoff chose it predominantly for a foreground for his wide-angle image. Bengt, Bill and I stayed east near the boats.  I chose an area for the telescope with a small spit of sand in my foreground (with the fish-eye lens in mind) but first things first. At about 6:10 am, I set up the video camera to capture the clouds rolling across the sky and people moving around setting up equipment. It was important to start this before anything else.  Even with its 140o wide field, with just five of us set up along 150m of beach most of the action was people crossing the frame rather than people in the frame.  My telescope position was in the bottom left corner of frame Bengt's in the bottom right. I set the time-lapse function to capture 1 frame every 30s.  This accelerates real-time by a factor of 900. Two and a quarter hours of video recording compressed to 9s of movie clip. During this time you see two rain showers come through, drops on the front element are in focus, they evaporate fairly quickly.  If I had noticed, I would probably have wiped them off. It's as well I didn't.  Sounds boring to say it but watching the water evaporate is a feature of the film. 


I took the tripod and equatorial head out of my backpack and bolted them them together. I used my polar alignment jig and 60 seconds later the mount was aligned well enough for the eclipse. I disengaged the now useless step motor to enable the worm drive to be turned by hand. At least I have a backup of sorts!   I set up two cameras on the mount. My DSLR was at the prime focus of a William Optics 70mm f6.2APO and my 35mm film SLR which has a built-in intervalometer had a full frame fish-eye attached.  I programmed it to shoot one frame every 10s starting 90s before 1st contact.  It was sitting on a ball and socket fixed to the static equatorial wedge. It used the mount as a glorified tripod only.  It wasn't as good as a tripod but it saved me the weight of a tripod in my limited baggage weight limit. I angled the lens 45 degreees to the horizon so that the horizon lies along the 170o diagonal field of view.

Photo Above : Auto exposure on the fish-eye resulted in long exposures during totality. As a result, the center of the field looks out of focus because the cloud motion has blurred them.

Rain, cloud, cloud, cloud and more cloud then more rain. The rain was fairly light. I watched first contact through the eyepiece of the telescope.   I laid out towel and a ground mat and lay down to try to get some rest to offset the lost sleep.  Matt was pacing up and down the beach furiously like a man possessed. Matt didn't have any equipment save a DSLR hanging round his neck. Instead he made "house calls" to each observing station in turn.  He came up to me and said in an accusative tone, " You're looking awfully relaxed. How can you just lie there like that?"  I don't remember my exact response but it might have been something like, "Do you think it will clear up if I pace up and down the beach like you?"    

Photo Above : Bengt caught me during one of the light rain showers that hit us before totality. But if you don't like the weather on Tatakoto, wait 5 mins and try again! It was dry and clear a few minutes later.  

At 8:25am local time, 20 mins before second contact I went to change the battery in my video camera.  Nominally three hours, I didn't want to risk a flat battery during totality.  I restarted the time-lapse at 8:25am (20 mins before second contact) set to 1 frame per second (30 times faster than real time). 

A clear patch appeared on the horizon and it soon became obvious that we would at the very least see part of totality.  In the last few minutes before second contact, I carefully rechecked my focus.  The Pentax K10D doesn't have live image but it does have a focus OK indicator which I used to set the focus.  The little refractor has a very solidly, smooth, fine geared Crayford focusser that definitely made focussing easier.  As totality approached the clear patch synchronized with the start of totality so that we looked through light cloud during the Baily's beads. I was able to capture the image below of shadow bands projected on the thin cloud that was widely reported during this time. But the diminishing crescent come Baily's beads come diamond ring created too much flare through that cloud and I did not observe the phenomenon visually. 



Above:  Taken about 20s before second contact  [William Optic 70mm f6.3, Pentax K10D, 1/500s]

"Second contact with shadow bands"  [William Optic 70mm f6.3, Pentax K10D, 1/125s]
This eclipse was distinguished by two very sharp small long lasting diamond rings and the fast moving cloud moving across the sky.
At the beginning of totality, fast moving  cloud raced across the face of the Sun then cleared a few seconds later.
The shutter speed of this exposure was 1/125s but the appearance of the streaks don't change appearance on another
exposure taken with a shutter speed of 1/500s.  These streaks are now thought to be shadow bands projected onto on thin low level cloud.
This  phenomena was observed from Anaa, Tatakoto, Hao and Easter Island at this eclipse. Since these phenomena were captured eclipse chasers have reviewed old material and found that the phenomena was previously recorded but not noticed at the time. Image capture 8:45:43 local about 5s before second contact.    
 

The shadow band projection effct was also recorded by Bengt Alfredsson in this image below.
Nikon D300 &
Nikon 180mm f2.8. ISO200 1/50s f8

The diamond ring lingered and then the corona revealed itself.  Some people wear an eye-patch to pre-dark adapt their eye.  I do not.  First the light is so bright during totality that full dark adaptation is wasted. Second, one of the pleasures of eclipse observing at second contact is watching the corona grow as your eye recovers from the glare of Baily beads and diamond ring.  This was no exception. The corona grew and grew and grew.  It did not rival the huge seven degree corona that I saw from Bolivia in 1994 but to the naked eye it was a good 6-7 solar radii to the end of the longest streamer and most other long streamers in the equatorial region were 4 Rs. 

This stills-animation of the eclipse simulates the growing corona.  All images taken through a 70mm f6.2 APO.



At the beginning of totality, I did not observe the umbra crossing the sky.  I see it in videos but didn't see it naked eye.  I think I must have been distracted watching the cloud so near the Sun at second contact.

After photographing the diamond ring, I ran through my photographic sequence quickly. Using the camera's 5 step bracketing, I can acquire the full set of shutter speeds in about 30-60s.  Because of the cloud at the beginning, I ran through the short exposure sequencing four more times after that to make sure I recorded inner corona and nice prominences before they disappeared behind the limb and in case any of my early exposures had been compromised by the cloud. 

[Photo left] Prominences at second contact.  The refractor image was good enough that the image shown here is enlarged 160% per pixel from the original.


I can do this without looking at the camera so during this time I looked around. Low level cloud scooted along obscuring our view at times from the horizon up to about 20o altitude.  Where I could see the horizon, I could see gentle hues of yellow and pale orange but no strong saturated colours like the crimson red colours observed in Zambia in 2001. This must be a factor of the air quality.  The air in Zambia was full of smoke and no doubt contributed to the crimson horizon. There was plenty of ambient light. I could easily read the LCD display on top of my DSLR. 


The low level cloud gave the already majestic corona an even more dramatic frame and the movement lent the dynamism of rapid cloud motion to the scene. Give me a clear sky any day but given that this cloud barely interfered with our view of the corona, I'll fess up to enjoying the setting. This feeling is captured beautifully in Geoff's wide field image shown at the top of this page and numerous other places on the site.


With the exposures out of the way I flipped the mirror down and peered through the eyepiece which I'd remembered to parfocalize before totality.  Wow wow wow!  I hadn't looked through a telescope and eyepiece combo at the corona since 2001 when I used a shorty 80mm refractor with the same eyepiece.  I'd forgotten what a truly sensational view you get. Step aside Miloslav Druckmuller! This is the real deal!


[Photo Above]  Totality Composite of 14 images  [William Optic 70mm f6.3, Pentax K10D, 1/2000s - 1/8s]  This is the best composite I've ever been able to produce.  

Focal lengths of this instrument and my old shorty are nearly identical [80mmf5 and 70mm f6.2] and I was using the same 16mm Konig 65o eyepiece yielding 27X with a 2.4o field of view. Back then, I lugged in a 500mmf4.5 telephoto AND telescope. But now I have a mirror flip box that lets me use one high quality optical instrument for photo and visual observations albeit on a 'time share' basis.


Anecdotally, I'd say that contrast between corona and the prominences was less than other eclipses both naked eye and telescopically and this made me think it was because the inner corona was brighter. Of course our eyes are phenomenally bad at absolute brightness determination so I have no factual basis to support this. Next, I noticed the detail in the streamers.  So so fine.  Incredible. Now that I have the set up about right, I will try not to miss a telescopic view of the corona at future eclipses again. Absolutely stunning.  I could have kept looking in the eyepiece for an hour but for better or worse I only allocated one minute for this although I had no timing device barking instructions at me so I had no idea what the time was and assumed I'd over stayed at the eyepiece.  Examining the metadata on my camera after, I see that I only spent about 40s doing this before returning to repeating the mid-speed exposures. At this time I noticed that I had set the bracketing interval to two stops not one and took a moment to correct this.  While looking around more I repeated the mid and long shutter speeds at one-stop intervals then set the camera to fast shutter speeds for the emerging prominences and chromosphere. 

I noticed prominences on the emerging limb and look through the viewfinder to see numerous prominences and a fantastic detached prominence at PA 100. I run numerous bracket sequences.  It's easy, just push the shutter release and the camera shoots all five exposures -  in this case from 1/2000s to 1/125s.  At the end of totality, I decided to re-shoot one last sequence of mid-exposures 1/125-1/8s.  Risky and, at the time, I was thinking unnecessary so close to the end but gut instinct told me to do it anyway and just as well.  They produced the mid-tone images I used in the best composite image I was able to make.


Next thing I hear Matt yelling that 3rd contact is approaching and through the viewfinder I spy chromosphere. I began shooting then remembered that I didn't reset the shutter speeds back to fast.  I quickly tried to move the shutter speeds back to faster speeds but was a bit late. I caught a late diamond ring and Baily's beads. Given the success of the mid-exposure sequence,  I won't complain about not quite getting the camera reset to high shutter speeds in time for 3rd contact. Good enough!

[Photos left and below] : The prominence image presented here on the left is 160% enlarged cropped close around the Sun while the image below is 100% both taken with the 70mm APO refractor. You could say I am quite satisfied with them and the telescope purchase.  


Bang. Third contact explodes before my eyes and it's all over.  This diamond ring lasted a long time - perhaps 7-10 seconds.  Another success. I hear a lot of noise from Geoff, Emily and Matt 100m down the beach. I'm not a yahoo kinda guy.  I fell backwards into the sand, stretched my  back muscles, tight from hunching over the telescope, smiled and took a deep breath. After 10 total/annular eclipses, partial phases just don't pump my blood any more so I got up, left the camera and went to talk to the others. Big grins all round as the post mortem began. 

  

3rd contact [William Optic 70mm f6.3, Pentax K10D, 4 different bracketted exposures 1/500 - 1/60]

And another one bites the dust!!


Then the fun started.  One by one we shed the cameras, donned the budgie smugglers*, goggles and snorkels and went into the water. Some took to the water complete with eclipse shades.  I was the only one who brought goggles -  some of the others went snorkelling the day before.  I went for a big long snorkel along the reef.  After a long leisurely snorkel, I swam across to Tahunatara Motu with Matt where Xavier's Eclipse City group were set up.  What a sight for those poor people as I emerged from the water with Matthew. 


* budgie smugglers - term used in Australia referring to  brief nylon or lycra male swimming costume so called because they cling so tight, it looks like you are hiding a budgerigar in the front. These are favoured swim wear by the leader of the opposition party in the Australian Parliament.  

                 

Photo's above : Bengt and Matt take to the water with eclipse shades.







[Photo Above] : Emily takes to the water.  Did I mention how nice this part of the lagoon was?





[Photo Above from Left to right ] : Geoff Sims, Bill Speare, Bengt Alfredsson, Joe Cali and Matthew Poulton engage in a bit of a post mortem.



Photographic and video methods summary.  

During this eclipse, I ran 3 lightweight imaging platforms. Two ran automatically and one ran manually.  

Platform 1 :  Samsung F30 video camera with Marexar ultra wide angle adaptor


Shooting time lapse sequences as follows : 
06:15am-08:25am  @ 1 frame per 30 s
08:25am Battery change.
08:27am - 09:11am @ 1 frame per second
Field of view (distorted) ;  Approximately 90o vertical x 140
o horizontal.

Geoff Sims and I swapped footage.  This time lapse footage was used in Geoff Sims "Tatakoto movies" See Geoff's report page.  I have edited the video with more emphasis on the time lapse video. I have  used some of Geoff's footage.

Tatakoto - Eclipse Totale de Soleil from Joe Cali on Vimeo.

On July 11th, a total eclipse was visible from the tiny atoll of Tatakoto in the far east of French Polynesia. I shot the eclipse in time-lapse video while my friends Geoff Sims and Emily Love shot the eclipse in real time. Geoff has already edited the footage into his own movies. You can see them on Geoff's report page. Geoff concentrated on the fantastic experience we had on the island. He used my time lapse footage as window dressing only.  Looking to do something different,  I was fascinated by the pulsing movements of people through the frame. Bengt and Matt almost seem to be dancing at times. There were only 5 people on 200 metres of beach. I've combined music I produced in Apple's 'Garage Band' with the movements of people.  plus eclipse imagery to create something more abstract. Enjoy....

TATAKOTO Eclipse totalé de Soleil from Joe Cali on Vimeo.

Platform 2 :  Pentax PZ1 35mm film camera

Fuji Pro S ISO160 film
Pentax 10-17mm full frame fish-eye zoom
Camera set to Av auto mode
Built in intervalometer programed to shoot 1 frame per 10s from ~ 90s before C2 until the end of totality 36 exp x 10s = 6 mins

View all the fisheye images as a flash movie. 
Movie will open in new tab or window, close tab or window to return here. 

 Click on the image or here to see the flash slideshow.

Platform 3 : William Optics 70mmf6.2 APO refractor 
               mounted on lightweight custom made EQ mount,  
               Pentax K10D DSLR, ISO 100.
               Flip mirror back with 16mm 65o eyepiece for visual observation. 

Procedure

K10D used in 5 step ascending shutter speed auto bracket mode.  Camera controlled manually. 
Allows for creativity in dealing with fast moving clouds.

Diamond rings  exposed at :
1/500s  1/250   1/125  1/60   1/30s   

Corona  
Set 1 : 1/4000s, 1/2000s,  1/ 1000s,  1/500s,  1/250s.
Set 2 : 1/125s,  1/60s,  1/30s,  1/15s,  1/8s.
Set 3 :  1/4s,  1/2s,  1s,  2s,  4s.

Set 1 shot numerous times at beginning and end ot totality to capture prominences and chromosphere
Set 2 shot three times
Set 3 shot twice.

Some problems were experienced.  Rain, clouds, rain, more clouds.......I stupidly shorted the power pack just after testing the mount
the evening before the eclipse & consequently melted a plastic insulator on the power supply plug.

Nonetheless, good results were obtained despite these set backs.  Images shown above during the report 


Further Analysis

In the image below, I've tried my best to identify stars in the field. The faintest is HIP 36152 at magnitude 6.5.
There are some other smaller (fainter) white specks but I am not sure if they are noise or stars and my software won't identify them.
 

 

This is the first composite I attempted. It is a totality Composite of 10 images  [William Optic 70mm f6.3, Pentax K10D, 1/2000s - 1/2s]

Totality single image  [William Optic 70mm f6.3, Pentax K10D, 1/30s, ISO 100] 

 


Links to individual observer's reports and photographs
TSE2010 Home Page        Group report as sent to SEML on July 14th. 

Joe Cali                         - Images from  70mm f6.2 APO refractor;                                       <-  YOU ARE ON THIS PAGE
                                     - full frame fisheye totality flash slide show;
                                     
- wide field time-lapse video;
                                     
- written account of observations on Tikahana Motu;
                                     
- pictures of shadow bands projected on clouds;
                                     - flash gallery of pictures from the eclipse and Tatakoto  

Bengt Alfredsson          - Images from  200mm f2.8 APO telephoto;
                                     - flash gallery of pictures from a great week on Tatakoto. 

Larry Stevens               - Images from  90mm f11 Maksutov.  
&  Michelle Bales            (still under construction)

Matthew Poulton           - Flash gallery of pictures from a fantastic week on Tatakoto 

Geoff Sims                   - Wide field and close up stills;
                                     - two really well-edited movies : -
                                            - one of the eclipse;
                                            - one covering the eclipse and our whole week on Tatakoto. 

Emily Love                     - First timer's impressions of the eclipse.  

Bill Speare                    - Written report.

Bob Pine                       - Bob's account of the eclipse from an almost deserted Tumukuru ( the town on Tatakoto).