Total solar eclipse in Australia leads to influx of amateur astronomers
50,000 visitors flock to tropical north-east but cloudy conditions are predicted to obscure spectacle
Tens of thousands of tourists, scientists and amateur astronomers
from around the world are waiting anxiously across tropical northern
Australia to find out whether the clouds will part in time to see a
total eclipse of the sun.
Forecasters have predicted cloudy skies for dawn on Wednesday local time, when the Moon will pass between the Sun and Earth and plunge part of the continent's north-east into darkness.
"There will be breaks [in the clouds] but it's just a matter of the luck of the draw whether you get a break at the right time," said Andrew Mostyn, a Bureau of Meteorology forecaster in the state of Queensland. "It's a bit of bad luck."
The eclipse will cast its 95-mile (150km) wide shadow starting at dawn in Australia's Northern Territory, then cross the north-east tip of the country before swooping east across the South Pacific, where no islands are in its direct path. A partial eclipse will be visible from east Indonesia, the eastern half of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and southern parts of Chile and Argentina. Totality – the darkness that happens at the peak of the eclipse – will last just over two minutes.
Forecasters have predicted cloudy skies for dawn on Wednesday local time, when the Moon will pass between the Sun and Earth and plunge part of the continent's north-east into darkness.
"There will be breaks [in the clouds] but it's just a matter of the luck of the draw whether you get a break at the right time," said Andrew Mostyn, a Bureau of Meteorology forecaster in the state of Queensland. "It's a bit of bad luck."
The eclipse will cast its 95-mile (150km) wide shadow starting at dawn in Australia's Northern Territory, then cross the north-east tip of the country before swooping east across the South Pacific, where no islands are in its direct path. A partial eclipse will be visible from east Indonesia, the eastern half of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and southern parts of Chile and Argentina. Totality – the darkness that happens at the peak of the eclipse – will last just over two minutes.
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