Under a cloudless sky, 20,000 eclipse chasers crowded a tiny outpost to watch a rare solar eclipse plunge. Part of Australia’s northwest coast into brief midday darkness Thursday while temporarily cooling the tropical heat.
The remote tourist town of Exmouth, with fewer than 3,000 residents. Which was promoted as one of the best vantage points in Australia to see the eclipse that also crossed remote parts of Indonesia and East Timor.
An international crowd had been gathering for days, camping in tents and trailers on a red, dusty plain on the edge of town with cameras and other viewing equipment pointed skyward.
NASA astronomer Henry Throop was among those at Exmouth cheering loudly in the darkness.
“Isn’t it incredible? This is so fantastic. It was mind-blowing. It was so sharp and it was so bright. You could see the corona around the sun there,” the visibly excited Washington resident said.
“It’s only a minute long, but it really felt like a long time. There’s nothing else you can see which looks like that. It was just awesome. Spectacular. And then you could see Jupiter and Mercury and to be able to see those at the same time during the day — even seeing Mercury at all is pretty rare. So that was just awesome,” Throop added.
Julie Copson, who travelled more than 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) north from the Australian west-coast port city of Fremantle to Exmouth for the first time, said the solar eclipse left her skin tingling.
“I’m so emotional that I could cry.” “The colour changed, and I saw the corona and sun flares…,” Copson explained.
“It was very strong, and the temperature dropped so much,” she said, alluding to a 5-degree Celsius (9-degree Fahrenheit) dip in temperature from 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit) when the moon’s shadow engulfed the region.
