What to Expect

A total eclipse occurs when the sun is completely obscured by the moon. The intensely bright disk of the sun is replaced by the dark silhouette of the moon, and the much fainter corona is visible. During any one eclipse, totality is visible only from at most a narrow track on the surface of the earth.

DATE OF THIS ECLIPSE :

14 November 2012 :  The date and time of this eclipse depends on your time zone.

On Greenwich Mean (GMT) or Universal Time (UT), the date is 13 November but in Australia the date will be 14 November. Cairns, Queensland is ten hours ahead of GMY/UT although Sydney, New South Wales is eleven hours ahead in November due to daylight savings time.

The official location of the ‘greatest eclipse’ as specified by NASA and International Astrological Societies is Lat.: 39.9565° S, Long.: 161.3322° W, which falls in the Pacific ocean just before the International Date Line.

So, the "official date" of this eclipse according to both Universal Time and Greenwich Mean Time is 13 November though if you are viewing it in Australia the date will be 14 November 2012.

PATH AND TIMING OF THE ECLIPSE

The antipodean track expected for the Total Solar Eclipse on November 14th 2012. The 2012 solar eclipse will be a total eclipse of the Sun with a magnitude of 1.0500. Totality will be visible from Queensland in northern Australia and the southern Pacific Ocean, with the maximum of 4 minutes 2 seconds visible from the Pacific Ocean. The Shadow Path of this eclipse is due to start at sun-up East of Darwin with a track approaching 140 Km in width. The path then travels between Bloomfield and Innisfail with the Centre Line close to Port Douglas and slightly to the north of Cairns.

The partial eclipse will start at about 05.45 in Cairns area and finish at about 07.40 starting about a minute earlier near to Port Douglas. The Total Eclipse should be of about two minutes duration starting seconds after 06.38 in Port Douglas and about 30 seconds later in Cairns. The longest duration of this Total Solar Eclipse in Australia, on the East Coast of Queensland, will probably be close to Oak Beach and should be nearly two minutes and five seconds long This will be the last landfall of this fabulous experience as the next closest will be far North of New Zealand in the South Pacific Ocean.