From the Antarctic: Base staff prepare for solar eclipse spectacle

By SIMON COLLINS at Scott Base

Staff and visiting scientists at Scott Base in Antarctica are preparing boxes with pinholes to observe a rare solar eclipse today.

The eclipse, in which the moon will pass between the sun and the earth, will completely block out the sun for two minutes in an area of Antarctica south of the Indian Ocean.

From Scott Base, the eclipse will block about two-thirds of the sun.

Dr Zainol Abidin Abdul Rashid, a Malaysian scientist at Scott Base to observe the event, told staff and visitors how to watch the eclipse safely using cardboard boxes.

He put a pinhole in one piece of cardboard and showed how to hold it with your back to the sun to project an image of the sun through the pinhole on to a piece of cardboard.

Dr Rashid will also take radio measurements of the free electrons from the sun's rays, which pass through the Earth's atmosphere during the eclipse.

"The eclipse will reduce the electron content. I'm looking at how much it will be reduced."

He set up equipment at Scott Base last year to continuously record the electron content of the sun's rays and how much radio signals from satellites are delayed or deflected by water vapour in the upper atmosphere.

He has installed similar equipment in Malaysia and plans to install it at Spitsbergen, north of Norway, in the Arctic. The results may show changes in the level of water vapour, a key contributor to the greenhouse effect.

Most measurements are done in temperate countries, he said. "By having information from the Antarctic, Arctic and tropics, we can complete the jigsaw of the globe."

A total eclipse occurs on average about every 18 months, but the remote location has made this one hard to observe.

Dr Rashid said the US planned to observe it from an aircraft flying along the route of the eclipse from the Russian base at Mirny, to the Indian base of Maitri.

Malaysia, like New Zealand, cannot afford scientific observers in the area where the total eclipse will be visible, and Dr Rashid said he was grateful to Antarctica NZ for letting him use Scott Base.

The eclipse

* From Scott Base, the eclipse will block out about two-thirds of the sun.

* It will also be visible in the southern part of NZ, blocking 11 per cent of the sun in Dunedin, 6 per cent in Christchurch and 2 per cent in Wellington at its maximum just after 11.15am.