The sun appears sickle-shaped during the world's first partial solar eclipse of 2011 on Jan. 4 near Muenster, Germany. Australia is expecting 50,000 visitors for a Nov. 14 solar eclipse that will be visible from Queensland.(Photo: Friso Gentsch, AFP/Getty Images)
SYDNEY -- Tens of thousands of tourists, scientists and amateur
astronomers who traveled from around the world to see a total solar
eclipse in northern Australia may be getting shortchanged by the
weather.
Forecasters were predicting cloudy skies around dawn
Wednesday, when the moon will pass between the sun and Earth and plunge a
slice of Australia's northeast into darkness. Many worried that they
will miss a rare chance to view the celestial phenomenon.
"There
will be breaks in (the clouds), but it's just a matter of the luck of
the draw whether you get a break at the right time," said Queensland
state Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Andrew Mostyn. "It's a bit of bad
luck."
The eclipse will cast its 150-kilometer (95-mile) wide
shadow starting at dawn in Australia's Northern Territory and then cross
the northeast tip of the country before swooping east across the South
Pacific. No islands are in its direct path, so northern Australia is the
only land where there's even a chance of seeing the full eclipse, said
Geoff Wyatt, an astronomer with Sydney Observatory.
A partial
eclipse will be visible from east Indonesia, the eastern half of
Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and southern parts of Chile and
Argentina. Totality - the darkness that happens at the peak of the
eclipse - will last just over two minutes.
Among those sweating
out the forecast was U.S. astronomer Jay Pasachoff, who traveled to
Australia in hopes of viewing his 56th solar eclipse. Pasachoff, an
astronomy professor at Williams College in Massachusetts, and a team of
about 50 scientists and students have fanned out across the region to
improve the odds that at least some of them will see the eclipse. The
group is planning to study the sun's corona, the glowing white ring
around the sun that is visible only during an eclipse.
Despite the anxiety over the weather and the long journey to get there, Pasachoff said he wouldn't miss it.
"Just
imagine you were a heart surgeon and someone actually told you you
could look inside a human heart only for two minutes, and only if you
went halfway around the world," he said. "You would do it."
Some
Queensland hotels have been booked up for more than three years and more
than 50,000 people have flooded into the region to watch the solar
spectacle, said Jeff Gillies, regional director of Queensland Tourism.
Skygazers
are planning to crowd beaches, boats, fields and hot air balloons to
watch the event. Fitness fanatics will race in the Solar Eclipse
Marathon, where the first rays of the sun re-emerging from behind the
moon will serve as the starting gun. Some have already been partying for
days at a weeklong eclipse festival.
Scientists will be studying
how animals respond to the eclipse, with underwater cameras capturing
the effects of sudden darkness on the creatures of the Great Barrier
Reef.
"It's an unknown with how they'll react," Gillies said. "A little bit of flora and fauna confusion, I would imagine."
The last total solar eclipse visible in Australia was 10 years ago, in the South Australia Outback.
Associated Press