The next great eclipse after the Africa 2001 one was 29 March 2006, in North Africa and Turkey.
We took a
cruise from Italy to Libya
with
Travel Quest Intl.
(In 2003, I put a note on my door about this eclipse, and joked
that if things got better in Libya, I might go to Libya. The joke turned out
to be true!)
Our itinerary:
Wednesday, March 22 Genoa, Italy Thursday, March 23 Naples, Italy Friday, March 24 Syracuse, Sicily Saturday, March 25 At Sea Sunday, March 26 At Sea Monday, March 27 Alexandria, Egypt (bus to the Pyramids) Tuesday, March 28 Tobruk, Libya March 29: ECLIPSE DAY! Tobruk, Libya Thursday, March 30 At Sea Friday, March 31 Tripoli, Libya Saturday, April 1 Malta Sunday, April 2 Salerno, Italy Monday, April 3 Genoa, Italy
The organizers clearly understood that they had a nerd crowd on
their hands; we visited Pompeii, Syracuse, the Pyramids, and other
ancient sites on the way to the eclipse.
Syracuse is where Archimedes lived; also the location of a
natural
fresh-water artesian well right next to the ocean!
Speaking of nerds, it was amusing to see that the disco and bars
on the ship were always pretty empty.
We watched the eclipse from the centerline, right where the
duration dropped to 4 minutes even.
This was where the (only) road from Tobruk down into the Sahara
crossed the centerline (marked with a red dot on
this map).
We bought this nifty eclipse t-shirt at the pop-up tent city where we saw the eclipse (about halfway between Tobruk and Jaghboub).
Google Maps satellite photos are so cool! I tried typing in the latitude and
longitude that the tour company gave us for where we'd be when we saw
the eclipse (30.940N, 24.241E), and Google Maps
did the right thing. If you zoom in, you can actually see the
road in the Sahara that we were on.
April 4, 2006: I updated this webpage while still travelling.
Things had gone pretty well so far. First evidence of this: the photo
above, which I took with a hand-held pocket digital camera.
Note that the "rays" in the photo are real, not optical effects: they are
caused by the magnetic field of the sun, which directs the motion of
the charged particles in the solar wind.
For serious amateur photos by one of our dinner-table-mates on the
cruise, see
this website
The next really good eclipse: 22 July 2009, in the Asia Pacific area. Almost 7 minutes of totality. And, as I discovered on this website, it's the same "saros series" as the first eclipse I saw, in Hawaii in 1991, saros 136. I'll have to start making plans soon...
