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To observe the total solar eclipse on November 23-24, 2003, the first one to be witnessed in Antarctica in the history of mankind, I went first to Cape Town in South Africa to take a special Ilyushin IL-76TD flight to the russian station of Novolazarevskaya. The weather was perfect on eclipse day: the sky was blue and clear, the temperature in this beginning of the austral summer around -25°C (-13°F). However turbulences caused by the various atmospheric layers made the observations, at high magnification, difficult just over the ice-capped horizon. Click on thumbnails for a larger version
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', 'Looking south from the Petermann Range valley. The peak at the center to the right is towering at 600 meters (2,000 ft).', 'en', 1);)
', 'At the exit of the Petermann Range valley (Wohlthat Mountains), you can find this huge and distant mountain of nearly 500 meters (1,600 ft) over the ice sheet of the valley already at an altitude of 1,700 meters (5,500 ft): the ice sheet thickness is over 1,000 meters (3,300 ft).<br>You can see ice crystals blown over the ice by a southerly light wind: this is only a prelude to katabatic winds. The temperature reading was -32°C (-26°F) and -46°C (-50°F) with windchill.', 'en', 1);)
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![Eclipse 2003](javascript:openSlideWindow(2, '../SlideWindow.html', '../../site_images/TSE_2003/', 'TSE_2003_Antarctica.gif', 31, 48, 1024, 684, 'centered', 'Eclipse circumstances - courtesy of Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC', 'For more information on solar and lunar eclipses, see <a href="javascript:gotoNASAGSFCEclipse();" class="ImageSlide">Fred Espenak’s NASA Eclipse Home Page</a>.', 'en', 0);)
 allowed me to observe what will probably be the most beautiful total solar eclipse I will ever witness.<br>The purity and dryness of the air offered us bright and vivid colors, the location was fairlylike, the Sun being a midnight Sun only minutes before totality making the all thing so unreal.', 'en', 1);)
![Eclipse 2003](javascript:openSlideWindow(2, '../SlideWindow.html', '../../site_images/TSE_2003/', 'TSE_2003_P1450.jpg', 33, 48, 1024, 673, 'centered', 'Partial phase before 4<font size="-2"><sup>th</sup></font> contact', 'The setup of the photographic equipment and the final choice of the viewing site (GPS coordinates: <tt>70° 53′ 22.5″ S</tt>, <tt>11° 29′ 23.3″ E</tt>, 762 meters) were unfortunately done in a hurry: I had to carry all the equipment over two kilometers because a ridge was going to mask the bottom of the Sun during a portion of the eclipse.<br> Photo taken with a 1,450 mm lens :<br>You can see two classical manifestations of the midnight sun: the first being the flattening of the Sun caused by the sun’s light rays refraction in the atmosphere; the second which blurs the image is caused by turbulences from temperature fluctuations and air density variations.<br>The image is even more blurred because the viewing site was just before the summit of a ridge.', 'en', 1);)
![Eclipse 2003](javascript:openSlideWindow(2, '../SlideWindow.html', '../../site_images/TSE_2003/', 'TSE_2003_1450_After.jpg', 34, 48, 1024, 673, 'centered', 'Solar disk just after 4<font size="-2"><sup>th</sup></font> contact', '', 'en', 1);)
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Guest BookXavier M. Jubier
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