Annular Solar Eclipse {10 May 2013}

Last year we had the privilege of traveling to Queensland and witnessing a Total Solar Eclipse.  It was an amazing experience. A week ago Melbourne experienced an early morning Annular Solar eclipse and we made a spur of the moment decision the evening before to drive to Ballarat Observatory to enjoy breakfast with them and the eclipse.

The sunrise that morning was spectacular and we enjoyed the beautiful colours that danced across the morning skies.

We arrived at the observatory at 7:50 am in time for breakfast and to see how they set up the equipment to see the eclipse safely.

Did you know you can build your own solar eclipse viewer ? National Geographic has a step by step tutorial.

One of the gentleman there had built his own specialized sun filters for binoculars and loaned them to us to take a look. We are looking forward to building some for next year's eclipse.

We had to mover around a little to get the best view but it was really worth it.  The whole experience lasted just over two hours.

This is a reflection of the sun and the moon passing over the bottom right.  If you look closely you can see a number of sun spots.  I just found a great site that has some information on photographing eclipses.  I'm really keen to learn how as next year there will be another annular eclipse over Melbourne.

We are really looking forward to next years eclipse (29 April 2014 at 3.59 PM).  Have any of you witnessed an eclipse ?

Blessings
Chareen

Future Solar Eclipses for Australia