Solar Eclipse 1991, Charles Lee's Web Site

<BODY BGCOLOR="black" TEXT="#e2e2e2" LINK="yellow" VLINK="white" ALINK="turquoise"> <H2>Solar Eclipse, Cabo San Lucas, 1991</H2><IMG SRC="EclipseCrop.gif"> <P><IMG SRC="eclipsecharles.gif" ALT="Eclipse at Cabo San Lucas, Baja California, Mexico" ALIGN="LEFT"> </P> <P>In July of 1991, nature repeated one of its most spectacular shows - a total eclipse of the sun.<BR><BR> <A HREF="gc.htm" TARGET="#top">Gerry</A> and I went to Cabo San Lucas, at the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico, checked into a resort hotel, and let the rest of the show come to us.</P> <P>As you can see in the photo (lower left) taken during totality, I leaned back against the stone wall that overlooks a Pacific Ocean view, and enjoyed the sun's corona, the pominances dancing through craters on the moon, and felt the light cool breeze that rushes along underneath the sun's dark path.</P> <P>This brief time of near night is accompanied by another light show. The horizon gives the appearance of a 360-degree sunrise (or sunset?) a slice of which you see in the lower photo.</P> <P>Because the moon crosses the sun's path so irregularly (although predictably), most eclipse chasers are forced to follow the sun's umbra across withering deserts, frozen tundra, humid jungles, and empty expanses of ocean, risking weather-induced disappointment to witness a phenomonon that lasts usually no more than two minutes. But every few hundred years, the moon is close enough to the earth at the right time of year to lengthen greatly it's black reward -- the period know as totality, when the moon's lingering bulk masks the sun's photosphere (photo in the upper left corner). The 1991 totality at this locale lasted <I>more than six minutes</I>. At the "center line" it was seven minutes!</P> <P> <A HREF=".." TARGET="_top"><IMG SRC="L_hand.gif" ALT="back to charles's home page" ALIGN="ABSMIDDLE" BORDER="0">Back to Charles's Home Page</A></P> <EMBED SRC="mood5.mid" HIDDEN="TRUE" AUTOSTART="true" LOOP="true" VOLUME="200"></BODY>