Hordes mass on Australian town for eclipse


	The sun's normally invisible corona appears during the 1999 total eclipse.

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NASA's 2002 solar eclipse site (with map)

(CNN) – Around 30,000 people are converging on a small South Australian town to watch the eclipse of the sun.

Ceduna, on the edge of Australia's Great Southern Desert, is reported to be one of the only two populated towns in the world where you can see the total eclipse on Wednesday.

The moon will also blot out the sun over Africa for the second time in 18 months.

Warnings that watching a total solar eclipse might cause eye damage haven't deterred the stargazers.

Accommodation in the town has been booked for months, as streams of visitors camp out to see the first total eclipse visible from Australia since 1976.

The lunar shadow will appear shortly after dawn over the Atlantic Ocean, race eastward over southern Africa and the Indian Ocean, then end at sunset over Australia.

ECLIPSE TIPS

Most space experts consider viewing a total eclipse with the naked eye safe but stress that partial eclipses, including partial eclipse phases before and after a total eclipse, should only be observed with certain safety precautions to prevent possibly serious eye damage.
Specialized sun filters or strong welder's glasses can protect the eyes. Also, viewers can use a simple indirect method to watch the silhouette of the eclipsing sun as it waxes and wanes through partial phases.
To do so, aim sunlight through a homemade pinhole camera or something else with a pinprick hole in it. Guide the focused sunlight onto a white background such as a sheet of paper. Of course, don't look through the hole directly at the sun.

It will travel about 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) during an odyssey lasting three hours and 21 minutes.

African show

The first land to witness it will be the African coast of Angola shortly before 6 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (1 a.m. EST).

"The local residents are indeed fortunate to witness a total eclipse twice within the span of 18 months," said eclipse expert Fred Espenak in a statement on NASA's eclipse Web site.

The odds of such a coincidence are quite low. Total solar eclipses occur about once every 18 months. But the same geographic location waits on average some 375 years between such eclipse events.

Despite the rare luck for African observers, there is a catch. The June 2001 episode took place over central Africa during the dry season, but this week's eclipse over southern Africa coincides with the regional rainy season.

Southern African countries have prepared for throngs of eclipse chasers.

In South Africa, one-third of Kruger National Park will fall underneath the eclipse path, and the park expects many visitors.

In Mozambique, the government declared Wednesday a national holiday so people can see the eclipse, which will skim across a southern section of the country.

A much broader swatch of the Earth will witness a partial eclipse, with the moon blocking only a fraction of the sun's disk, including most of Africa, western Australia and Antarctica.

-- CNN's Richard Stenger contributed to this report

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