Eclipse watchers thrilled by Exmouth’s brief blackout
Eclipse-chasers flocked in their thousands to the WA town of Exmouth to experience the state’s first total solar eclipse since 1974 | WATCH
There were cheers and tears in Exmouth on Thursday as a total solar eclipse plunged the remote Western Australian town into darkness.
At 11.40am, the clear blue skies turned dark, the temperature dropped, planets became visible and a 360-degree sunset formed as the sun became completely covered by the moon for 62 seconds.
Thousands of eclipse-chasers and scientists from around the world had descended on Exmouth for the highly anticipated event.
Among them was Dr Henry Throop, a program scientist in NASA’s planetary science division. Dr Throop was part of the team behind NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto, but it was the first time he had witnessed a total solar eclipse in person.
“It was incredible, it was so cool,” he told The Australian.
“It kind of came out of nowhere … The sky was dark, but the sun was just poking out and had this great sharp ring around it. It was so awesome.”
While solar eclipses provide astronomers and astrophysicists with a rare window to study the corona – the little-understood outer atmosphere around the sun – Dr Throop said the event was also memorable for opening the eyes of the public.
“The main thing is the excitement for the thousands of people here on the ground, who are not doing science, they‘re experiencing the excitement of interacting with the universe around us through this eclipse and there’s nothing else like it. It was mind-blowing.”
Gravity Discovery Centre Observatory chief astronomer Rick Tonello became emotional as totality formed.
“That is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. It is absolutely stunning,” he said.
“We seem to have lost something in the modern-day technologies, to just go out there and simply look at the night sky or look at celestial phenomena like this eclipse. There’s something deep in the human psyche, and it just puts us more back in touch with the universe in which we live.
“That’s why astronomers and astrophysicists do what they do, because they want to keep exploring and understand more about our local star, our sun.”
Astrophysicist Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, the director of the Curtin Institute for Computation, was also in Exmouth for the eclipse. She described it as astonishing.
“The pictures cannot adequately capture the experience of the temperature dropping and the light dimming to a completely different palette, which doesn’t exist at any other time, and then you see the sun’s corona clearly and stars and planets in the sky in the middle of the day,” she said.
An estimated 20,000 people descended on Exmouth – usual population 2800 – for the event. Huge cruise ships anchored off the coast in readiness.
Perth experienced a 70 per cent eclipse, with sunlight in the city dimming noticeably. The eclipse had an impact on the WA energy grid, with rooftop solar generation falling sharply as the moon moved across the sun.
WA Tourism Minister Roger Cook said the government had spent $22m readying Exmouth for the event, which was an “exciting day for Western Australia”.
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