Hi guys ... and gals :-), I returned from Gujarat yesterday (13th Aug) afternoon. I had a wonderful time there. It was great to experience (but not watch, unfortunately) the greatest cosmic spectacle seeable from the earth. We had gone to an isolated little village in the Rann of Kutch. The sky had been overcast for the entire week. But we got to see the first Diamond Ring during the eclipse. The "totality phase" after that was completely obscured by the clouds. But the experience of it all was very impressing, breath-taking rather. Within a span of 15 seconds after the first diamond ring, day turned into night. The darkness literally came upon us from all sides. The temperature dropped by about 4 degrees and the wind speed picked up instantaneously. WHAT AN EXPERIENCE MAN So what if we werent able to "see" the eclipse? The whole experience was worth the effort ... MAX, to use Harshal's term. The site chosen was such that there was not a single bump in the ground right upto the horizon on all sides. Strong winds were blowing across the desert, kicking up dust storms everywhere. We even got to see a small tornado, collecting dust from everywhere it went. We were protected from the dust by a long line of waist-high bushes high upwind. It was such a wonderful experience that I resolved to watch every TSE that I am able to reach, within economic and time constraints. It is an event that you would love to watch 101st time even if you have seen it 100 times before. I heard the cameras on the now inactive space station Mir were used to film the passage of the shadow across the surface of the earth. Is there any site that can make those films available to all? Speaking of films, a member of our Khagol Mandal had used a "Zero Lux" camera to shoot the eclipse with 1200x magnification. So we will be able to see the event pretty soon, since the camera could see the sun inspite of the clouds. I know that the linuxers are going to flame me for posting a non-Linux mail here. But I considered the mail interesting enough to break the ML protocol. BTW chetan, whats your new mail address? And where is Harshal? Sameer. PS: I heard that the next eclipse, in 2001 will be seen from South Africa. The totality will last for a maximum of 4mins 56 secs in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar ... any takers???? :-)
