Hi all,

A few days ago I happened across an essay by the late Stephen Jay Gould
describing his observations of "ordinary New Yorkers" observing a near
total solar eclipse visible from that city (some decades ago). This
reminded me of a question that I had been meaning to ask here for
several months, but hadn't gotten around to. Here it is:

On 8 April 2005, it seems that a complete or nearly complete solar
eclipse should be visible from the Pitcairn Islands, with closest
approach to totality occurring at 11:49 AM local time, at an elevation
of about 55 degrees from the horizon. The same eclipse should in
principle be marginally visible near Balboa, Panama, with closest
approach to totality occuring at 5:13 PM local time--- but of course,
too low in the sky, arghghgh, to be really suitable for observation. An
interesting feature of this eclipse is that Venus should be visible only
two degrees away, which should further add to the drama of the event.
Are these predictions correct?

On 3 November 2005, it seems that a complete or nearly complete solar
eclipse should be visible near Avila, Spain, with closest approach to
totality occuring at 10:58 AM local time. Is this prediction correct?
Will these in fact be -complete- solar eclipses?

I also have two postdictions concerning historical events which I don't
have enough historical information to verify myself.

On 21 September 1922, according to Misner, Thorne, & Wheeler,
Gravitation, 1973 (this just happened to be the only book I had at hand
which contains any information at all about historical eclipses!), a
total solar eclipse was visible in Western Australia. Indeed, it seems
that the closest approach to totality, as seen from the vicinity of
Alice Springs, would have occured at 3:25 PM local time. Is this
correct?

On 8 April 2005, as we probably all remember, there occured a transit of
Venus across the visible solar disk. It seems that, weather permitting,
this would have been visible from the island of Diego Garcia from about
9:30 AM to 3 PM local time. Is this correct?

"T. Essel" (virtually stargazing, somewhere in cyberspace)