The Total Solar Eclipse of June 21, 2001

Photographs by Arto Oksanen

Our observing site was 50 km north of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. A huge fig tree gave us some shade from the blazing Sun. There was 21 Finnish amateur astronomers on our expedition. Here are some of us together with staff from Gwembe Safaris who had organised this great site and a memorable African experience for us.

We had time for a field lunch on hay bales while waiting the eclipse to start.

Kauko and Pentti are anxiously waiting for the first contact.

Partially eclipsed Sun 10 minutes after the first contact. Note the large sunspots!

The three generations of Brooks family are following the partial eclipse by projecting the images of Sun through small holes on a cap. Mika is ready with his digital video camera to capture the total eclipse.

Heikki and Lyyli follow as more and more of Sun is being eclipsed behind Moon.

About half way to the totality. The temperature starts to drop from +26 C.

Christer is enjoying the view of eclipsed Sun with his solar binoculars.

The drivers from Acacia Safaris took a closer look of eclipse through the telescope.

Totality! There was one large protuberance on the western side of the sun and a few small ones on the northeast.

A longer exposure shows quite symmetric inner corona.

And even longer exposure brings the dimmer outer corona with some delicate streamers reaching more than one million kilometres from the Sun.

This is a composite of several scanned negatives to show the inner corona with protuberances and the dim outer corona in one image.

All images copyrighted by Arto Oksanen.

The TSE2001 Expedition (in Finnish)