2nd contact, corona (one single image, processed with unsharp masking) and 3rd contact - these and many more images are here, with technical details and in full resolution; a sample is also scattered throughout the main text below!

Eclipse Cruise into the Desert

With the MSC Sinfonia to Camp Ras Elhilal (North) in the Libyan Sahara

Greatly misunderstanding and ignoring the desires as well as the capabilities of both regular desert tourists and typical eclipse chasers, astronomically expensive and - as far as one was able to find out from abroad - mandatory all-inclusive solutions had been put in place for everyone wanting to come to Libya in the key week, all that topped by an eclipse tax of EUR 120 that came and went several times (and eventually remained in effect). Apparently only those groups arriving by a cruise ship and staying in one of the prepared camps only for a few hours were to be exempted from most of the expensive overhead costs (though it would turn out that a few groups could pull off individual desert tours after all): Ironically the deal the Sinfonia passengers got turned out to be about the cheapest (!) way to experience the eclipse in the Libyan Desert well away from the coast where it would be longest and the probability for clear skies was by far the highest. Technically that is true only for the Libyan part of the journey, of course, but compared to the various land-only or fly-in-get-eclipsed-fly-out offers which survived the value for money with the whole cruise in mind was still a pretty good deal. Even if you had made the booking only 2 months before the eclipse ...

The Sinfonia had quickly filled with over a thousand eclipse chasers brought in through a U.S. agency (with promotion through a U.S. astronomy magazine) and another hundred or so through an Italian company, working for the national amateur-astronomical organization, the Unione Astrofili Italiani. Which, at least that's what I was told, also had taken the original steps that would make this Crociera dell'Eclisse a reality. Eventually the cruise line had filled some vacant cabins with regular cruise passengers, usually unaware of the special nature of the trip. Which also seemed to be the case with many of the crew: During general briefings, the eclipse was never mentioned, and e.g. the bus ticket to the eclipse site simply promised a »Desert Day Trip« and nothing else! Eventually transfer to the central line was arranged for everyone who wanted to go (following much demand), though a number of »regular« passengers preferred to stay on board for deep partiality only, if they cared at all. Practically all crew members, sadly, had to stay in Tobruk, too.

For all others things turned out to be almost shockingly simple, the closer we came to Libya: Instead of the usual lengthy and expensive visa procedures (in which you must obtain an Arabic translation of the passport, e.g., and then have it authorized), you just paid 25 Euros and got a tiny stamp into your passport - which even stayed on board while you walked around on land with nothing but your cruise card, alone and unescorted it you so wished. Already the evening before the eclipse, shuttle buses had been ready to take »daring« passengers into the heart of Tobruk after darkness had fallen - the few hundreds who took the opportunity at 19:30 soon found themselves in a buzzling, clean and enormously friendly city, with shopkeepers usually speaking some (or even a lot of) English and many things to buy indeed, such as various brands of non-alc beer. I had been on the lookout, e.g., for some sticky tape - and could even choose between many colors, only to find even more stationery in another shop.

If Tobruk on March 28, 2006, will be the face Libya shows to its eager visitors in the future, tourism in this undiscovered country may take off indeed! While there was not much to see in downtown Tobruk in the sense of ordinary tourism (the only listed attraction are the huge WW II cemetaries outside the city), the atmosphere was almost enlightening, with clean air (some contrast to the Egyptian megacities the cruise had visited earlier), no hawkers whatsoever (also a great relief) but the occasional teenager asking to take a picture of us - with his camera-equipped cellphone! And great food from street vendors, esp. a fine choice of kebap-like rolls. The »dawning« of eclipse day had made us head back to the Sinfonia after a few hours though - but without exception those who went (especially the Americans) were full of praise for our exotic and - until that very moment but now not anymore - scary destination. The coming day would be a good one (especially as the weather models accessed through the satellite internet connection aboard looked all perfect)!

Having booked the eclipse cruise with the Italians had the advantage of being put on the first two busses arriving at »Camp Ras Elhilal« the next morning - at least that's what a big sign said right at the street. The desert is extremely flat here (as the geographical term Libyan Plains implies), and as far as the eye could see there were tents and vehicles parked off to the North of the road (from Tobruk to Al Jagbub). Having arrived at the sign at 8:28, the buses continue to race straight into the desert and alongside the camp - countless tracks in the desert soil bearing witness of all the construction activities - until at 8:50 we come to a sudden stop. »Well Come to Libya« another sign tells us now, from some »Eclipse Group 2006«, and we can settle down here for the next few hours. No more tents within sight (they were there for overnighters from the ship and mainly from other groups that had paid significantly more than us »Desert Day Trip«-pers), only some shelter from the Sun, a booth making brisk sales with cheap Libyan eclipse t-shirts (made in India) and 5 lonely WC huts: The long line forming in front of the 5 tiny blue boxes when the »American« Sinfonia busses arrive a while after ours easily becomes the most-photographed sight of the camp until things get serious.

Some choose to stay in the crowd, others walk as far away from the sub-camp as they can (there is no fence in sight), and so the crowd spreads over a vast, totally flat area. First contact would be only at 11:17, and so one could spend some time walking around and marvelling at the big telescopes some had brought, the antics of Libyan TV which had come with a satellite truck and numerous cameras on cranes (and lights!) to this site alone - or Libyan boy scouts performing some noisy dances under the steeply climbing Sun. The latter had thankfully also - by 9 a.m. - burned off completely the dense fog that our bus had driven through all the morning: Fog 100 km from the coast was absolutely not what the climate studies had predicted. (Which is why I refrained from worrying at first, though after 1½ hours of driving ...) But a rain system moving through Northern Africa a few days earlier had soaked the ground which indeed felt strange in places to walk on - and big live snails can be seen now here and there. Under a blue and totally cloud-free (and also surprisingly dust-free!) sky now, getting ready for darkness almost precisely at noon: 2nd contact, the beginning of totality, is predicted for 12:35:38 and 3rd contact for 12:39:38 local time. The solar crescent is shrinking.

And the cosmic clockwork delivers as promised, in all picture-perfect glory: The arrival of the Moon's umbra can be seen at the horizon to the lower right of the Sun - which stands just past culmination at 62.4° elevation - as a pronounced darking of the atmosphere. And then it sweeps upon us with twice the speed of sound. With the last photospheric light covered the corona, long visible in viewfinders already, pops out for the naked eye as well, in the middle of a vast dark-blue area high in the sky: That is the 2nd-darkest totality sky in my recollection of now 13 TSEs, beaten in darkness only by the skies over the Andes in 1994. However then we had had cirrus clouds, here we have the cleanest skies imaginable. In stark contrast to the dark blue above are the intense yellow and red colors along the horizon, the most intense hues seen in a decade. The corona, meanwhile, is surprisingly full of structure for a Sun so close to its minimum of activity, with several long streamers in the general direction of the solar equator and yet spanning some angle. And there are even remarkable prominences, especially a pointy one seen during and after 2nd contact that had not been there 24 hours ago when several H-Alpha telecopes had permitted chromospheric views from the deck of the Sinfonia.

At eight(!) times the duration of the previous year's totality, experienced during another cruise and from a rocking boat in the middle of the Pacific, the 4 minutes and zero seconds of totality from a rock solid continent are such a relief! I have actually never been so relaxed during a TSE and never made so few mistakes, despite operating two video cameras and a SLR still camera using old-fashioned chemical film (you see some early results from a cheap lab scan sprinkled among these lines and in more detail on a special page). Yes, I even look at the coronal wonder in the sky at one point and say to myself: What, it isn't over yet?! The key to not having your TSE feel like the canonical 8 seconds (or 20 sec, as some would describe our 4 minutes later) is to deliberately do different (moderately) pre-planned things and not just stare at the show. It is very helpful, e.g., to jump up, grab a 'stationary' video camera and pan (and look!) around you! Still there are too many aspects of the marvel of even a 4-min totality that one mind can grasp: E.g. I notice only bright Venus still quite high in the SW and no other object beyond the Earth-Moon system.

And time is limited: Soon enough new, high prominences and eventually an arc of chromosphere appear on the other side of the Sun and then a double (!) diamond ring of photospheric light erupts! With wild cheers all around the show comes to an end - or rather doesn't quite yet: Faint shadow bands appear on a bedsheet 'borrowed' from the Sinfonia, not as impressive as during some previous eclipses, though. (Perhaps the extremely good seeing our site got after the foggy start, which delighted the high-res astrophotographers, subdued this phenomenon.) And then I notice what actually becomes the most memorable aspect of TSE 2006 (apart from the surprisingly beautiful corona on its dark blue canvas, of course): The dark grey sky in the NE, where the umbra is fleeing, is a staggering sight, especially compared to the high horizon brightness in the South or the SW where the shadow had just come from. This stark contrast - never seen that well in recent TSE memory - is also captured nicely by photo and video cameras. Meanwhile some trucks with our lunch arrive - arrive again; they had shown up a quarter hour or so before totality and had been asked in no uncertain terms to back off ...

Some still hold out for 4th contact at 13:58, others break down their equipment already, and at 14:30 the bus convoy starts to head back to Tobruk, hitting the main road again at 14:45. Now I see a final sight of Camp Ras Elhilal or rather its surroundings to behold: Everywhere to the left and right of the street back to town are (I suppose) Tobrukians camping out on their own! There are cars everywhere, widely spaced but lined up for miles and miles. So the eclipse had been a spectacle for the locals as well and not just for their strange overseas visitors (as had been the case during some eclipses of the past in other world regions). With some in our group as well as in the others that were stationed even deeper in the Sahara the desire has certainly been raised to return to Libya at another time, maybe in the not-too-distant future when the tourism infrastructure has developped just a bit more but before everything becomes as crowded as at the hotspots in Egypt. That was the lesson for us who had come upon this country for just a few special days (for me, by the way, it was the 2nd Arabian eclipse in just 6 months). And perhaps, hopefully, the lesson the Libyan authorities draw from this unique experience is that one can let those strange Westerners walk around their country freely and without red tape, and everyone has a good time ...

Daniel Fischer - first version posted April 11, links added in April, May and September 2006