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An "event of the century" with far-reaching consequences - traffic chaos and "end of the world in southern Germany" ;-) , people behaving like crazy for buying eclipse eyeglasses, millions of people who look banned in the sky - like when the aliens came in the movie "Independence Day": The so called "milennium eclipse" on August 11, 1999 impressed most of the people living in this area. So I want to tell all those and also "the rest of the world" how I experienced and survived this prodigy of nature and media event. I was happy to have some free days that time so that I went to Böblingen (near Stuttgart) in the area of Total Eclipse - where the Moon was completely in front of the Sun. If I would have stayed in Cologne, I would have seen the Moon covering not more than 95% of the Sun - not enough to see the Sun's corona.

So my brother in law Klaus, his father and I went southward the day before the eclipse. It was nearly evening when we came to our hotel and we watched the weather forecast. Good, we thought, that we went in the area of Stuttgart and not to Munich - because the forecast said in our area the chance would be much better to have a good view of the eclipse. But everything went different.

At the morning of the eclipse day we started to go to a place that we had chosen the day before for our observations. Unfortunately it rained nearly all the time. So we stopped a short way before our obervation post and we stayed rainproof under a motorway bridge. There was no need to wear the eclipse eyeglasses, but we took them on for this photo.

"Here come the Men In Black..."

As you see, our mood was much better than the weather. We thought: If you bought these eclipse eyeglasses weeks before only for these few minutes, you should wear them under all circumstances. Don't we look nearly as cool as Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in MIB with these eyeglasses? :-)

But with the time it became very uncomfortable on the slope under the bridge. And we imagined that the rain would become less. So we decided a few minutes before the Total Eclipse to drive down to the place we had chosen the day before. There we could enjoy the eclipse (and the rain) to a high degree.

Wow! About as dark as you see on the picture above, it became very suddenly for about 2 minutes. That was really impressing. Some minutes before the Total Eclipse it became as dark as you know from very bad weather. So it was nothing really unusual - because we had clouds and rain. But in a few seconds it became as dark as you have in a clear night with full Moon. The picture above had an exposure time of 6 seconds - that's why it became lighter as it really was. But I darkened the scan until it looked like what we really saw. By the way: In the foreground you see the top of the car, because I had to lean the camera on it.

Yes, now the two most important minutes of the month August were there - but nowhere the corona of the Sun. Because of the thick and dark clouds we had no idea where the Sun was at that moment. But nevertheless it was an impressive prodigy of nature - this very suddenly coming darkness.

About 2 minutes after the Total eclipse the clouds opened a little for 2 or 3 minutes to let us take a vague view on the solar sickle. For those who can't see any form of sickle in the left picture, I reduced the same photo to 12 colors (right). So you might imagine that the hidden light behind the clouds really was the sickle of the Sun...

After these very impressing minutes we went to the motorway towards the south. We had almost no hope to see more from the hidden Sun. But some time later the clouds became thinner and from time to time you even saw some sunlight. Directly we tryed to go to the next motorway parking place. As you can see, we were not the only ones - and we did not come to the parking place, because it was too crowded. Everywhere people who stared to the sky - as if they would see an UFO. Some state of emergency on motorway A81 - and only because Sun and Moon by coincidence are on the same position of the sky. We humans are really a strange species... :-)

And so at last I got the chance for a showable photo of the Sun's eclipse. I made it with 400mm focal distance and 1/750 seconds exposure time. How good that some clouds still were there - because if the sky were clear, I could not have taken the picture. The protective foil was sold out days before the eclipse...

So this was my personal Sun's eclipse 1999. Even if we had expected more (because we hoped to see the corona of the Sun), it was a nice tour, and Klaus, his father and I will have positive memories to it. And it really was an impressing experience. If we want to see the corona, we go to the internet. I searched for some interesting pages about it (and about other astronomic pictures) and at the end of this page I give you the links.

Now I hope that you have enjoyed my view of the Sun's Total Eclipse. As an eye witness I can tell you: Also in southern Germany the end of the world did not come. :-)

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