Astro Trails Eclipse Articles

Chasing Shadows: Total Solar Eclipse December 2020, Patagonia, Argentina

The total solar eclipse of 2020 December 14 started at sunrise in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, fortuitously reached its maximum...

Chasing Shadows: Total Solar Eclipse, July 2019, Bella Vista, Argentina

The centre of the umbra of the 2019 July 2 Total Solar Eclipse first touched the Earth’s surface at 18:02 UTC in the Pacific, north east...

Chasing Shadows: Total Solar Eclipse, June 1991, Hawaii and Mexico

With a long duration eclipse in prospect and a choice of two attractive locations, what could possibly go wrong? This was our biggest...

Chasing Shadows: Total Solar Eclipse, July 1990, Finland

This was always going to be a weather dependent eclipse with rapidly changing sunny gaps in large cumulous clouds. We flew in on a...

Chasing Shadows: Total Solar Eclipse, March 1988, Sumatra and Philippines

There were several destination options for this eclipse and based on weather data we selected a site on Banka Island, off the Indonesian...

Chasing Shadows: Total Solar Eclipse, June 1983, Java

Anticipating the likely weather conditions was quite an artform in those days, long before any sort of satellite aid. I spent some time...

Chasing Shadows: Total Solar Eclipse, July 1981, Kazakhstan

Every eclipse has different logistic obstacles and the 1981 event had plenty. As the track ran through the Soviet Union even getting...

Chasing Shadows: Total Solar Eclipse, February 1980, Kenya

I had driven over the road from Mombasa to Malindi some twenty years earlier when Kenya was still a colony and the road had aged no...