OT Total Eclipse 144 days' time

I've been through one total solar eclipse. It was fun, but I don't need another. They are all alike.

Is there an eclipse party thing? Like geezer rock concerts?

Each to their own I suppose. I find every one totally jaw-dropping.

It's visible from a narrow strip on the NW coast of W. Australia so all the party-animals will be concentrated in that area, which is unfortunate as they are most obnoxious race to have to breath the same air as. Hopefully I'll be able to charter a boat and get a few hundred yards off-shore in glorious, silent isolation.

Cursitor Doom is remarkably stupid. If you didn't understand what was going on - in terms of lumps of rock in orbit casting shadows - it might be impressive, but once you do it's a bit tedious.

It's not one of the more densely populated parts of Australia. It's hard to get to, and there's not a lot of accommodation for tourists.

They do seem to be expecting 50,000 visitors.

There's an oil field off the coast that's going to be decommissioned in couple of years. so Cursitor Doom may be able to find a boat to hire.

It's hard to explain. A bit like why some people ride Harley-Davidsons: if they have to explain the attraction, you wouldn't understand it anyway. And the biggest impediment to your understanding is that other lump of rock - the one between your ears.

It's easy enough to explain ostentatious risk-taking. Quite why anybody would take it seriously is harder to comprehend - we all know that there is primitive stuff in the primitive parts of the brain, but sensible people do know enough to discount it.

Not exactly. Your brain doesn't work very well, but it isn't any kind of lump of rock. One of it's defects is an incapacity to realise quite how defective it is.

Many don't even require the bike, a Harley sticker on the truck's back window satisfies their need.

They are not quite all alike. Though America did have a really good long one not all that long since. Friends travelled to see it.

Depending on the stage of the solar cycle you can get to see impressive prominences and solar corona streamers during totality. Those details are different every time. Seeing one for real is impressive even when you know exactly what is going on and for the ancients it must have been pretty terrifying to see the sun eaten like that.

The Jesuit scholar Ferdinand Verbiest used modern (heretical) tables of the sun to defeat Chinese astronomers at predicting eclipses and as such saved his life and converted the then emperor to Christianity. It is a truly hair raising tale - well worth a read!

We know so much about medieval techniques because the Chinese made wood block prints showing how Verbiest accomplished things. He was surprisingly good at casting cannons and boring them and it is claimed made the worlds first steam powered automobile as a present for the emperor. He was highly honoured in the Chinese court. Parts of the observatory that he built in Biejing still survive.

The last total solar eclipse visible from my home country of UK was 1999 August 11th. I had looked forward to it from being a child. In fact the UK was clouded out completely. I never expected that when it occurred I would actually be living in Belgium and observing it by driving to a satellite predicted gap in the clouds over Luxemburg.

There are eclipse chasers who will go to almost any lengths to be at the better ones with longish totality. You will have to pick your location very carefully for this one to even see totality - it will be ring of fire for a fair chunk before and after true totality.

Worth checking the typical weather conditions too at that time of year in NW Australia before chasing half way round the world. I don't think it is worth it for just 1 minute of true totality. YMMV