Report from the 1999 total solar eclipse

The clock radio wakes me up at 2.30 am. I convince myself that I actually have to get up although this is though. Never tried to get up this early before (?). Going to bed at this time is more usual! Ok the reason why I those to get up so early was the worry about traffic jams through Belgium and France. I assume that millions of people from Holland and Belgium will go to France to experience this once in a lifetime eclipse virtually in the backyard. This would undoubtably lead to major traffic jams.

I get up, dress, get a little bit of breakfast, call John to check that he is awake, get the last few things loaded into the car, pick up John in Delft and start the southward journey. The weather is anything but promising: overcast and some drizzle. And the wind is northerly that
means the weather is moving the same way as we are! We wonder if another danish colleague having a flying licence will manage to get away to France with his family in a four person Piper. He cannot fly in this kind of weather.

The trip to France goes well without incidents. The traffic is much less dense than expected, we only encounter a little bit of jams in the Ardennes south of Charleroi. The result is that we arrive already at about 7 am at a road side rest area just north of Attigny, the planned location. Obviously we could have taken it a little bit easier but we didn't want to take any risks. Staying in a traffic jam in Belgium at 12 o'clock well north of the totality zone wouldn't be fun! It is now daylight but there is absolutely no sun to be seen, just a grey cloud cover.

Map of northern France with the cross indicating our observation spot. Courtesy Fred Espenak, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

Now we have four hours to kill before first contact. We get some warm coffee to alleviate the quite cold and windy conditions here. I begin to prepare my equipment that is my video camera on a tripod plus my old SLR camera - while anxiously watching for breaks in the cloud cover, none so far. Other people started to arrive, mostly belgians and some dutch people but it is still anything but overcrowded. Around 9 am we spot the first small break in the clouds seeing a little bit of blue colour.

The sky at around 9 o'clock (video capture)

However the breaks are still rare and we can't view the sun for another hour. Our mood starts to improve. Maybe the sky will clear after all. I start to experiment with my camcorder and the homemade filter trying to catch some of the rare glimpses of sun.

John taking a look at the sun. My camcorder is doing the same.

We didn't see the first contact (clouds of course). Below is our first glimpse of the eclipsed sun as seen by my video through an improvised solar filter using a floppy-disk (definitely not recommended but at the time I didn't have better).

The first chop of the sun (video capture with filter).

A solution when you haven't got enough eclipse glasses (video capture)

Short before totality. The sky start to clear but the sunshine is strangely dim.

Everybody is waiting for the moment. The sunlight is getting quite dim now.

Now there is only a few minutes to totality. We can see clouds approaching from the north-west. Will they reach us before totality. We make desperate plans to jump into the car and drive southward. But strangely enough the clouds seem to stop. The wind has disappeared!

Only a few minutes before it happens.

The sun is now only a thin sickle. It's like dusk but still sunshine. I remove the filter from the camcorder assuming the sunlight can't damage the ccd anymore. Everyone is watching the sun through their goggles. Thin clouds drift in front of the sun but we can still see the show. In the last seconds before totality things go fast. The light level drops quickly. We see the diamond ring although it is not so impressive through the protective viewers. Then it happens. We remove the eclipse viewers and see the corona. It's fantastic. It's is dark like late twilight but the horizon is still bright. The clouds unfortunately start to thicken. The corona is now only barely visible but we can see red prominences along the rim. Then suddenly it is over. The light returns nearly instantly like somebody quickly turns the light dimmer to full power. I can feel the small hairs raise a little bit. Imagine that sunlight can be switched on so fast! Unbelievable

Here are some frame grabs of totality from my eclipse-video made with a Sony Hi8 TR1100E camcorder

	T-27: The corona is just visible. Notice prominence at bottom. On the video it appears already 60 seconds before totality!
	T-5: Diamond ring developing
	T-2: Diamond ring!
	Second contact
	T+4: Corona!
	T+25
	T+35: After adjustment of camcorder
	T+40
	T+60
	T+65: The clouds are getting thicker
	T+75
	T+95: .. and thicker :-(
	T+130: Third contact, Baily's Beads
	T+132: Light again, diamond ring disappears quickly due to clouds

Composite image made by averaging several of the corona images from T+25 to T+95.

We leave before the partiality ends. The last part of the partiality is hardly impressive compared to the exciting show we have just experienced. So we start the journey home. This time our worries about traffic are fully justified. All main roads are completely jammed by cars. We manage to get to Belgium along small secondary roads but it takes a long time. The trip back takes nearly seven hours compared to less than four hours for the outward trip. So we are back in Delft just after 8 pm very tired but also very satisfied after having experienced this amazing phenomenon.

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