Pre: Madurai - Day I

After the Epic failure that TSE 2009 turned out to be last year, The Annular Eclipse of January 15th 2010 remained the sole hope of seeing a central eclipse anytime soon. Although it wasn't anywhere close to as exciting as a Total, It certainly did live up to my expectation.

Preparation for the ASE began pretty late. The announcement on The BAS Website took quite some time to get up. After some dilemma on whether to organize things formally (or not), We decided against it. This would be a smart decision since Rameshwaram (the destination a majority of us picked on) was indeed very crowded and managing a crowd would have been the last thing we would've wanted on our hands.

Final plans took shape pretty late. Naveen made a last minute change in his plans to hit Kanyakumari instead. Amar also preferred to stay off Rameshwaram and chose to go to Nagarkoil instead.

A majority of the people however chose to come to Rameshwaram. Some of them joined Akarsh's troop from IITM, who decided on observing the Eclipse from Pamban bridge, instead of Dhanushkodi as initially planned.

My plans ran into panicland, as the good folks who I was supposed travel with backed out one after the other, until I was ultimately stranded with no means of transport on the day before the Eclipse. Fortunately, I ran into spaceriker on IRC, with whom (and Raghu), I would make the entire trip. Giving me company (but stranded worse herself) was Joanna Griffin who would finally make the onward journey to Rameshwaram on her own, but would return with us on the way back.

Loaded with a faithful 6" f/7 scope borrowed from BAS, Raghu, I and spaceriker set off from Bangalore by around 9AM. TN roads were excellent all the way till Madurai - where we intended to stop for the night. Except for an Ambulance that drove straight at us from the opposite direction (We've lived to tell you this tale), We didn't have anything eventful (Apart from a number of other people who for some occult reason, chose to scare the sh*t out of people cruising at 100KPH+, by choosing to come straight at them from the opposite direction) until we reached Madurai by lunch. Surprisingly, the 450KM drive took only about 6HRS.

At Madurai, We caught up with Parag Kulkarni and his gang. Together, we visited the Madurai mInAkShi temple. Despite the crowd, It took us only an hour to finish the darshana. On the way back, my shutter-bliss was killed by one of the security-men who found out that I hadn't paid for my "camera-ticket" and threatened to confiscate my camera on that ground. That was enough to turn me off, although I did do some stealthy clicking before exiting the temple premises.

After Madurai, Parag and Co chose to head on to Ramnad. Although I egged on for doing the same, we decided to stay back in Madurai for the night, especially for spaceriker who had work to attend to.

Rameshwaram - Day 2

The Madurai-Rameshwaram drive took about 3.5 hours. Tamizh Music blared violently in many of the loud-speakers put up in the villages we passed along the way. Obviously, a lot of people were still in Pongal-mode.

We nearly ran out of fuel (and money) at around Ramanathapuram, But fortunately, we found an ATM as well as a petrol-station. After a quick status check on the weather at Rameshwaram, We would cross Pamban bridge and arrive by around 10PM. Our problems were nowhere sorted out, for the road to Dhanushkodi was blocked, thanks to the TN governor's visit (which we were warned about). We however found another road to Dhanushkodi shortly after that so it didn't really prove to be a show-stopper.

The biggest issue was however concerning the telescope / camera filter. I was supposed to borrow a sheet of Mylar (generously offered by Aparna of BAS) to fit the 6", but we would never meet for there was no cellphone-signal beyond Rameshwaram. My last chance of hope was to run into Mr. Suresh Sali at Dhanushkodi and at the least acquire a camera filter. This seemed further bleak a chance after we reached Dhaushkodi, for the crowd there numbered thousands (including a lot of Amateur Astronomers). I almost resigned to my fate and decided to just watch the Eclipse, before spaceriker managed to acquire a piece of X-ray film for me from some Assamese amateurs. We managed to craft a tape-able filter out of this shortly after. Although it wasn't as nice as being able to use a 6" f/7 at prime-focus, My 300mm f/5.6 didn't seem that bad an option given the desperation.

By now, the sun was into first contact already. The single-layer of X-ray film was not just dangerous (It only blocks visual AFAIK, Not UV/IR), but terribly inconvenient to achieve sharp focus in. As paranoid as I am, I was trying to use my left eye (Just in case, I'm a right-eyed observer) and that made things worse. At some point, I even started feeling some heat in my eye, which made it too crazy to go on.

As fate would (fortunately) have it, I ran into Suresh Sali at this juncture, who made his grand arrival saying "I have something better than that". Although we hadn't even met before, It seemed like we were best-friends from a past-life. It was relief of a different kind as I blurted out "Aren't you Mr. Suresh Sali?", for which he nodded with an firm "Yes I am". I would acquire a 58mm thousand-oaks filter right after and junk the X-ray contraption for good.

It actually took some "Dark-adaptation" in the viewfinder to find the Sun once the filter was screwed on. The difference in quality (and safety) was obvious.

The Eclipse

The first onset of the shadow occurred at 11:14AM (when I was busy scampering around in panic for a filter). It would take the better part of two full hours for annularity to take effect. There were passing shrouds of clouds (and the coast guard plane) at various points of the partial eclipse.

It would be 01:18PM when the second contact would finally occur. The two hours seemed to pass really quick, despite the painfully crouched position in the boat (on the beach, not in the sea!) that I had gotten myself into with my camera and the faithful tripod.

At the onset of Annularity, the friendly Tamizh announcer at the "Pandal" set up by Tamizh Nadu Science Forum went absolutely berzerk. Although I was too busy trying to set my alt-az (Fail!) tripod to keep the sun centered for my generously bracketed exposures, I could still make out frenzied cries of "idu adbhutamAna dRshyaM" or equivalent on the loudspeaker.

What I did however miss out on, was a good peek at the sun off the camera. While I would regret this, I'm still pretty happy that I managed all those exposures at annuarity. Some processed photos show hints of Bailey's beads as well as the chromosphere (could be a filter defect. Not confirmed the latter as yet) despite the modest 300mm lens they were shot with. If not anything else, They've helped me get past the "photograph-an-eclipse" barrier that I thought I'd be wrestling with, nearly every eclipse after the epic failure that TSE 2009 turned out to be.

Peak annularity occured at about 01:22PM, five minutes post the second contact. There was a noticeable temperature dip through this period, as well as conspicuously attenuated sunlight. The latter was indeed the the highlight of the whole eclipse. The illumination on the ground was "eerily soft" for mid-afternoon. Although not best-described by any analogy, the illumination was comparable to a weak evening daylight (but with the usual shadow-lengths!) or a semi-obscured / cloudy / overcast day (but with the sun visible!). The tides however, did not show any apparent rift in pattern.

Third contact occurred at about 01:27PM, signaling the end of annularity. Clearly, the trio of us were thoroughly satisfied with the experience if not part overwhelmed. The friendly people at the "Pandal" called a timeout shortly after for lunch. While I would've loved to join, I had exposures to make up to (for all the losses from the onset). spaceriker and Raghu, tired and hungry as they were, would cooperate to go doze off in the car while I clicked away.

I would wrap it up at Dhanushkodi only after the fourth contact (at around 3:10PM). The last hour was particularly boring, as the best part of the eclipse was already over (ie, the annularity), and my stomach was groaning rhythmic pulses of call-for-grubs. We left Dhanushkodi, after some manual assistance to get spaceriker's car off the sand.

(Un)worthy mentions - Dhanushkodi

a) We survived the whole afternoon on some peanuts.

b) The "Pandal" encouraged the many eclipse-watchers gathered there to address / speak-up in their native languages. Hindi (yes), Kannada (Quite a lot of it!), Telugu, Tamizh were heard generously (amongst many others).

c) Lots of TV Channels scouted around for potential interview-candidates. My BAS T-Shirt managed to gather the attention of a couple. Although I refused for the most part, I managed to speak to somebody from Raj TV after some coaxing (after I had recovered from the filter-panic). Thankfully, I can no longer recall what I spoke. So much for my 30-secs of fame in Tamizhland.

d) There were some good folks from BARC who sat with me in my boat. We had a good chuckle at some of the astrological, pseudo-scientific nonsense being spoken at the Pandal ("Last such Eclipse for 30,000 Years", etc)

e) However, I must mention that the TN Science Forum, FWIW had organized things well. At the least, Eclipse goggles were available in abundance for people to observe the eclipse.

f) The other man on the boat, a native of Rameshwaram, somehow thought it was necessary to do a caste-survey on me. As paranoid about Dravidian ideologies as I am, I refrained from giving him a definitive answer. He also sermonized to me about various communities of TN (nothing I didn't know about already) - Velamas, Nadars, et al before I too shared some knowledge with him from a Karnataka perspective. I must mention, that he was remarkably well-informed about the political scenario in the south (and all the chief-ministers of Karnataka till Yedyurappa). He was also surprised by the extent of my modest Tamizh knowledge.

g) Keerthi, Subramani, Prakash, Naveen et al (ABAA) as well as Aparna (BAS) happened to be at Dhanushkodi too. I wouldn't meet any of them during the trip. Ditto with Akarsh and the IITM gang, Vishwa Keerthy, et al at Pamban. Joanna would observe the eclipse from Rameshwaram itself and I wouldn't meet her till the evening.

Post Eclipse

As spaceriker would point out, All of us inadvertently ended up sticking to the superstitious eclipse routine

a) We wouldn't eat till the end of the eclipse. (There was nothing to eat even at Rameshwaram, let alone Dhanushkodi)
b) We would bathe after the eclipse. (Not I or Raghu, But spaceriker)
c) We would visit a temple. The bathing in the 22 wells was inevitable here. So that would constitute a bath as well as a temple-visit for all of us.

The last part was indeed an interesting experience. Legend has it that Rama cleansed himself of his brahmahatyA-pApa (rAvaNa was a brAhmaNa) sins by bathing in the water of all these 22 wells. Although none us had killed anything (excepting some mosquitoes), We found ourselves dripping wet and all cleansed up. (including me, despite some apprehension about wetting the camera).

Personally, I felt guilty about paying our way in for a quick tour (Thanks to a tout), But time or energy wasn't on our side. We met Parag and Co again, later in the evening. I would finally meet Joanna as well, shortly after.

While a lot of people were already homeward-bound, We had decided to firmly rest our posteriors at Rameshwaram for the night. Parag and Co were headed to Kodaikanal, while passing Pamban on the way for a short stint at observing with Akarsh and Co. The latter was a very interesting proposition for us too, but we decided against it thanks to a practical issue. We were warned that arriving vehicles weren't being allowed in Rameshwaram that night (due to the expected heavy influx of Ayyappa devotees the next day). While my plans were unclear at that point (about Kanykumari and further-travel or not), spaceriker and Raghu too were too tired to risk being stranded without sleep for the night. This would later cause some heartburn as Akarsh and co were witnesses to some fantastic skies, with LMC taking the spotlight (None of us Bangaloreans have seen LMC. The closest we got to this previously was seeing parts of Tarantula Nebula from Yelagiri in Jan 2007 and possibly at ShivanahaLLi once after that).

Homeward-Bound

It took me a single-call (of duty) to drop the rest of my travel plans. The next day, I, spaceriker, The BAS 6" scope, Raghu and Joanna would be on our way back home. We left Rameshwaram at around 1PM, to reach Madurai by about 3:30 where we broke for lunch. The drive to Bangalore beyond Madurai was swift. We finished a formality of a dinner at Salem and touched Bangalore by 11:30PM. Thankfully, Joanna offered me shelter at her place to crash for the night, which saved me the trouble of waking my folks up that late in the night.

Assorted links to various other ASE-reports
a) Akarsh -> http://kstars.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/trip-to-rameswaram-to-view-the-ase-2010/
b) Spaceriker -> http://fryol.net/?p=669 (Contains some of my unprocessed photographs)
c) Keerthi -> http://keerthisquest.com/astro/ase2010
d) ABAA (Many Reports) -> http://abaaonline.blogspot.com/
e) Ajay Talwar -> http://picasaweb.google.com/ajaytalwar80/ASE2010LocationLocationLocation#
f) Joanna Griffin -> http://www.aconnectiontoaremoteplace.net/?p=153
g) Shashank -> http://picasaweb.google.com/hjshashank/AnnularSolarEclispeJan152010#