Cotswold AS member Neil Havard took to the sea in pursuit of the Total Solar Eclipse on March 20th – and got bonus views of the aurora on his trip.
Neil writes:
Despite appalling conditions at sea (force 10 and over 5m swell, with heavy cloud), there was a thinning of the cloud for about one minute during totality. I called our Captain Moses as he managed to part the clouds for us at a critical time. Photography was close to impossible in the winds gusting up to 70 mph and a rolling ship, but out of the many rubbish ones, I managed two semi-passable photos of totality, which I have attached. They won’t stand much enlargement. The one does show two prominences on the left hand side. I know they are not great photos, but you should have been there to see the conditions – I was lucky to get anything.I also managed to see the Aurora twice. Once from the back of the ship while docked in Akureyri on northern Iceland. There’s some light pollution, but the Pleiades are clearly visible. I’ve attached a couple of those photos for you to pick from, if you want to include any on the website. I also managed to travel to a dark site some way from Reykjavik and saw the lights again. They weren’t as bright, but there was more colour. I’ve attached a few of those photos. On two of them, Andromeda galaxy can be made out on the left hand side (on one it is very close to the edge).
