by Chris Malicki
from
Scope magazine of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada – Toronto
Centre
Jan/Feb 1992
Having witnessed the largely successful total eclipse in July in Baja
California
with the RASC, my wife Liz and children Adrianna and Greg
accompanied
me to California to view the January 4 annular eclipse at sunset.
Although Astronomy Magazine gave a one in three chance of good
visibility,
this was good enough for us. After all, it was only a
continent-width
away.
During the week before, there was a great deal written in California
papers
and spoken on TV about the “ring of fire” and “double sunset” coming
up.
I was quite impressed that people were encouraged to view the event and
safe methods were well publicized.
Remarkably, during our nine days in California, exactly three had clear
enough skies to see the setting sun. Most fortunately, January 4
was one of these beautiful days sandwiched between the storms of
January
3 and 5. Nonetheless, we had to flee south from the clouds of
L.A.
to Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego. Here on a magnificent
cliff overlooking the Pacific, we observed first contact (by projection
through 11x80 binoculars) right on schedule at 3:53 p.m. PST. Our
family quickly became surrounded by a number of bystanders who were
attracted
by our equipment and enthusiasm. They soon became caught up in the
excitement
of witnessing the moon eat its way up into the sun and progressively
cover
up a number of impressive sunspot groups.
Fifteen minutes before annularity, Liz remarked that the surroundings
had
taken on that eerie dull yellow “eclipse look”. At three minutes
before annularity (which occurred at 4:49), we watched the lower horns
of the solar crescent rapidly approach to form the annulus. By
this
time, thin clouds of tomorrow’s approaching storm moved in front of the
sun; in contrast to their spoiling effect at totality last July, here
they
worked to our advantage. They acted as a natural filter and we
were
able to stare naked-eye and through camera telephoto lenses at the
evolving
setting “ring of fire”. Ash from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption added
its beautiful orange colours. We saw annularity for 6 minutes 50
seconds, almost the duration of last July’s totality. In the last
moments we stared as the upper solar crescent set into a low cloud bank
above the ocean – an inverted C sinking into the sea.
It was a wonderful ending to our sixth-in-a-row successful central
solar
eclipse. Now we look forward to number seven next June 30 over
the
south Atlantic.
Click below to view picture