Astrophotographer From Udupi Travels to Exmouth, Australia, to View Hybrid Solar Eclipse

Astrophotographer From Udupi Travels to Exmouth, Australia, to View Hybrid Solar Eclipse

Astrophotographer Nihal S Amin from Udupi, travelled to Exmouth, Australia, to view the hybrid solar eclipse on April 20. Nihal along with Shivam Bansal, an MBA student from Agra, and Yash Soorma, a post-graduate student at the University of Melbourne from Delhi belong to an online community called Astrophotography India. They encountered pristine night skies in the Pinnacles and Hamelin Pool where they saw the large and small magellanic clouds, two deep-sky objects that are barely visible in Indian latitudes.

On the eclipse day, the trio drove nearly 350km in early morning to reach Exmouth. They decided to put up camp at the beach. Once the access to the beach opened at 10am, they made their way to the sands, just four minutes before C1 — first contact (start of the eclipse). They started taking their first shots just as the moon’s disc started entering the sun. The hybrid solar eclipse had officially begun. Since this was a hybrid eclipse, the total duration was 62 seconds.