Plan B Forum

Tens of thousands have gathered in northern Australia in the hope of glimpsing a rare total solar eclipse.

The eclipse is expected to plunge parts of Queensland into darkness for just over two minutes on Wednesday morning.

However, onlookers fear cloudy weather will dash their chances of seeing the phenomenon.

A partial eclipse would be visible from other parts of the region, including New Zealand and eastern Indonesia, the Associated Press said.

However northern Australia is the only area in the eclipse's direct path.

The total eclipse will be most clearly visible in Cairns, while areas such as Darwin, Brisbane and Sydney will also see partial eclipses, an ABC News eclipse guide said.

Australian tour operators have welcomed the surge in holiday-makers, with reports of some hotels being booked up more than three years in advance.

A total solar eclipse, which occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, is a rare occurrence, and animals have been known to react to the sudden darkness with confusion.

Scientists will be using underwater cameras at the Great Barrier Reef to capture creatures' reactions to the eclipse.

"It's an unknown with how they'll react," Jeff Gillies, Queensland Tourism's regional director, said. "A little bit of flora and fauna confusion, I would imagine."

Birds could also be affected, reports said.

"This is a relatively short eclipse but we will still find even in a short space birds will fall asleep," said Dick Cijffers, an eclipse tourism operator.

Gob wrote:While you have yesterday once more....

This morning got off to a happy start. I switched on the gadget as usual to behold the carnage of old wars and the prospect of new ones. There was yet another sickness bulletin on the sclerotic BBC. And the umpteenth statement of the blindingly obvious truth that the United Nations is not fit for purpose. But there, rising up over this slough of despond, were black and gold moving pictures of the total eclipse in Australia.

To say that these images were wonderful and awe-inspiring would be an abuse of the English language. We need some new clichés. But I looked and saw, and there was the dark disc of the usually Michelangelo-bright moon exactly covering the incandescent circle of the sun. And, in a second, a rim of startling light ran all around the moon’s circumference. If you were fortunate enough to be standing out in the Australian bush, you could see stars too. And I thought of Hopkins and his “little fire-folk sitting in the heavens.”

When judging books published in the 20th century, I award first prize for crassness to Fraser’s The Golden Bough for its rubbishing our overwhelming experiences of nature’s sublime visions. He speaks of how “the savage” was terrified by such as eclipses as by thunder and lightning – because he didn’t understand them. Now we know better of course. But Fraser talked rubbish. For a truly philosophical remark we turn to Wittgenstein who, having read Fraser and turned away nauseous, said, “Does he think we don’t still find these events mysterious and terrifying?”

To reduce our account of an eclipse to scientific jargon is as futile as trying to “explain” the Mona Lisa in terms of viscosity and Angstrom units. When we look at nature’s electrifying displays, we receive aesthetic shocks and rejoice in them. But don’t at any cost let us have any of that primitive “savage” stuff from The Psalms:

When I consider the heavens, the works of thy fingers; the moon and the stars which thou hast made, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?

One more thing I find intriguing. The sun is huge and ninety-three million miles away and the small moon is in our backyard, a mere quarter of a million miles away. Yet in an eclipse their discs precisely cover each other. Don’t therefore imagine that anyone designed it that way. It’s just a cosmic coincidence, isn’t it, Professor Dawkins?

for us to see the partial eclipse in full.