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where was you on Wed. 11th Aug. ‘99 ?


RT65CB-SWL

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I was in the South Hams area of S Devon. Clouded out.

i had waited for this eclipse for more than 25 years having read about it in many books when I was young. The annoying thing was I was living in Dubai at the time so could have taken a short flight to Iran for guaranteed clear sky. But because  of my earlier aspirations to see it from near home, I decided to come back to the UK for a holiday just to see it!!!

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7 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

I was in the South Hams area of S Devon. Clouded out.

i had waited for this eclipse for more than 25 years having read about it in many books when I was young. The annoying thing was I was living in Dubai at the time so could have taken a short flight to Iran for guaranteed clear sky. But because  of my earlier aspirations to see it from near home, I decided to come back to the UK for a holiday just to see it!!!

I read about the eclipse in the Observers Book of Astronomy when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I waited 27 years to see it, and it was cloudy !

Of course the previous day and the day after the eclipse were more or less clear :rolleyes2:

After the eclipse we went to see "The Phantom Menace" at Penzance cinema. I think my kids enjoyed that more than I did.

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Yes, I went to see it. We stayed in a (third-rate, but who cared?) B&B and set off early to find a good spot, which we did. It was on a residential road, on a hill facing downwards towards the sea in the south. Perfect. We got to this location between seven and eight. Just before nine the owner of the house outside which we were parked came and offered us coffee! The only thing that could have been better would have been a clear sky (yeah - like we believed that was going to happen!) Memories of seeing lots of 'flash' shots of the clouds being taken on the beach during the minutes of totality. And the traffic jams as we headed home afterwards. Still, at least most of that journey was in glorious sunshine!!!

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I was the site manager at Hampshire Corporate Park just north of Southampton, a 20 acre landscaped business park where B&Q, Norwich Union Healthcare and Natwest Bank had their office headquarters.

I remember hundreds of the office bods coming out and standing in the gardens to watch the event. We were lucky that there were a few gaps in a mostly cloudy sky and we were able to see the eclipse quite well at (near) totality. It went quite gloomy, just like dusk really, making the outdoor lighting all come on and everything fell silent for a minute or two. 

It remains the only time I've ever been near a total eclipse so far.

Edited by Geoff Barnes
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I was in a field near Dieppe, with my wife and baby son. The skies were clear during totality and Quails started calling as the sky darkened. It was awesome. Took the same 18-year old son to see totality in Wyoming in 2017. Even more awesome!

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I was committed to a general public event at the Astronomy Centre, crowds turned up and we had excellent views of the significant partial eclipse. I could have gone to Cornwall and missed it all! Saw a perfect total in Turkey 2004, or was it 2006.    😎

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I was stuck in work but fortunately Hampshire CC allowed us to go out and have a look. Didn't matter as we didn't see a thing except thick cloud. But it was an eerie  experience as it all went dark and the birds started singing, unsure what was going on. Plus it was 30 mins not working. 

Edited by russ
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Three of us from Border Astro. Society decided to drive down to Devon for that event.
The local Press got wind of our trip, and a reporter paid us a visit.
The report appeared in the local Evening Newspaper.
David Ramshaw at that time was head of Physics and Electronics at The Trinity School
in the grounds of where, our Observatory was eventually sited.

The telescope the reporter mentioned was not a scope at all, it was a Camera lens.
It was mounted on what was basically a  crude fork mount, the polar disc the fork was on
 was friction driven by a stepper motor. Unfortunately the Devon weather was uncooperative that day.

Nevertheless, we had a great time down there. Visited some very nice places indeed, and Ironically, the Sun shone all that time.
We camped in a Farmers field with his permission of course, and a generous donation😃.


 We were very near the coast  at Slapton Sands.
We all know the Infamy that took place there in WWII. We did visit the Memorials to those young Americans 
who died there. Very Sad.
Ron.

 

 

1999 Eclipse.jpg

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I was in a field near Wisembourg France with my family..  it was  overcast, I remember everything going still as the eclipse started but there was no view of it, then from across the field a cheer went up as a piece of clear sky allowed us all to see the end of the eclipse ..  corona then diamond ring..  absolutely stunning 

Dave

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......... was committed to a general public event at the Astronomy Centre, crowds turned up and we had excellent views of the significant partial eclipse. I could have gone to Cornwall and missed it all! Saw a perfect total in Turkey 2004, or was it 2006.    😎

Peter - how could you ever forget!?  It was 2006!

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7 minutes ago, paulastro said:

......... was committed to a general public event at the Astronomy Centre, crowds turned up and we had excellent views of the significant partial eclipse. I could have gone to Cornwall and missed it all! Saw a perfect total in Turkey 2004, or was it 2006.    😎

Peter - how could you ever forget!?  It was 2006!

Forget what?       😀

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at home with a really bad chest infection.  

saw a 99% partial with both neighbours either side and a neighbour past them in the back garden.  

Married the neighbour the other side but one years later.   

kev

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On 11/08/2019 at 12:56, Paul M said:

We traveled to the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Golden sands. Made a 2 week holiday of it and on eclipse day got a tour bus to a coastal promontory on the eclipse center line. 

Specifically here: http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_1999_GoogleMapFull.html?Lat=43.54768&Lng=28.60651&Zoom=8&LC=1

2019-08-11.thumb.png.be4893fc22bcba950df08a0828a56213.png

Perfect conditions on the day. We (Myself, MD and our son who was 8 at the time) had only eclipse glasses for viewing and the only record is a photo of us taken pre-totality at the site. That and some fond memories! :)

I'd planned it years before but could only book it when bookings started being taken about a 9 months before. I wasn't the only one with that idea. Eclipse fever grew in town as the day approached.

Looking at the map; you and your family were not to far from the RAS group. :hello2:

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I took my young son to Cornwall then. A long train journey from Sussex across to the west country hefting our tent, sleeping bags, cooker etc.

We set up in a camp site on the coast and I remember we lay in our tent ,heads poking out at the sky and were able to see a wonderful display of the Perseid's the night before.

I was hopeful, but alas dawn came with wall-to-wall  clouds and the only enjoyment we had were the seagulls going crazy at totality.

Now I am here in upstate New York waiting for the 2024 eclipse and hope for better.

We'll see.

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On 12/08/2019 at 12:45, Astroscot2 said:

I was 10 miles north of Verdun right on the centre of the path of totality, I awoke to heavy rain and cloud that morning, drove 1 hour North under clearing skies, It was a spectacular sight.

 

Mark  

We were somewhere in northern France.  We travelled the day before, not booked a hotel (not realising how busy it would be!!) and ended up spending the night (I couldn't say 'sleeping'!) in the car in a small town square.  We used the facilities at the local bar (which thankfully opened for breakfast 😄 ).  When it got light it was raining - we thought we'd spent an uncomfortable night in the car for nothing.  So we just drove north following the brighter weather until we found mostly broken clouds, we parked on a track in a field on hill.  The only kit was a camera and a 2 bits of card with a pinhole!  W saw parts of partial, but we were lucky with totality - seeing and feeling the whole thing!  I remember most both the darkness travelling across the landscape towards us and the cheers doing the same.  Another car was parked about 100 yards away, and at the end we felt compelled to go to them.  They were Dutch, we didn't undertsand each other much, but the need was there to just share the amazing thing we'd seen. 

We then tried to get a hotel room near Rouen that night and failed again - I insisted we keep driving until we found somewhere (2 hours later we avoided another night in the car and without facilities!).

It was an amazing experience - and definitely got us hooked on eclipses.  I was in China and USA for totals, we were due in Turkey but Mike got taken ill in the airport hotel and so we didn't get there 😞  Thinking of Chile next year, and certainly the next US one.

It was film only in those days, and Mike hadn't done any prep on settings etc.  So we were interested to see what he'd got.  We grinned a lot when these came out! (sorry about the reflections, but you get the idea 🙂 )

IMG_20190813_235403.thumb.jpg.bc3d2ac8c23796a90d21c8c333b9b38a.jpg

 

We then cntinued down to Annecy and had a lovely couple of weeks holiday (we had booked that bit 😉 )

Helen

 

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Old picture time....I'm sure my parents and brother won't mind me sharing this.......... :D

I was in Dartmouth for the day, it is one of my childhood memories, although I do remember the British weather getting in the way and us only being able to see little bits of the eclipse when the clouds thinned a bit.

136656372_SolarEclipsePhoto.thumb.jpg.11856462904f76c413f8ac13bb8f1f32.jpg

 

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 Cherbourgh Peninsula. Saw the run up until literally a few seconds before totality, then the clouds obscured the view. Bit gutted at the time but after the event pleased with what we had witnessed. The day remains memorable.

 

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I went to Paris with my husband to see it having seen it advertised in a holiday brochure the year before.  My interest in Astronomy had re-awakened since Hale Bopp two years earlier, but I didn't know enough about it to realise until some-one tipped us off a couple of weeks beforehand that Paris was only on 99% totality so we wouldn't see the full eclipse effects.  

So I went to Smiths and bought a map of Northern France and marked out the zone of totality.  We had no idea how we would get to it, and hiring of a car was likely going to result in getting jammed up in traffic with every-one heading in the same direction.  So on the morning of the eclipse we went to Gare Du Nord, looked at the train destinations and our map and bought a ticket to go to I think it must have been Roye or Compiegne.  It was a double decker train and I think the world and his dog must have been on it, standing room only.  

It was cloudy in Paris and as we passed through Chantilly there were some breaks in the clouds, but then we could smell something burning.  at the next station Creil (a small village), there was an announcement on the train far too fast for my school girl French, and then a woman spoke to us in English and said the train had broken down and that they were laying on a bus.  She advised us to get off the train where we were as the eclipse was likely to happen while we were on the bus and we would miss it.  

So we duly got off the bus in this little village, it was within the 100% totality zone, but not right in the middle.  We wandered around trying to find a place to stop and view the eclipse which was by now already past first contact.  We found a little river with a convenient wall in front of it that we could lean on, and in a short time there were loads of people of different nationalities all watching the eclipse and the passing clouds, which luckily for us parted at the appropriate moment and we saw the full works.

I will never forget it.

Felt sorry for all the people in Cornwall.

Carole 

Edited by carastro
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Just recently finished my second year undergraduate physics degree and a few of us from the uni Astronomy club took a ferry from Portsmouth to Le Harve which was in totality. We arrived that morning. Was cloudy at first contact but completely cleared 10-15 mins as I recall before totality and stayed clear for a while after. Then we killed the rest of the day before getting the ferry back overnight. It was delayed on departure by an hour as the tide was so high the ramps would not reach the boat!

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We were on the campsite above Sennen Cove in Cornwall. Totally cloudy above, but the effect of seeing twilight around 360 degrees of the horizon was memorable.

The day before was glorious though, spent on the beach at the cove, with various family members.

The Perseids gave a good display one night, but I can't recall whether it was before or after the eclipse

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