Eclipse Bulletins on Internet

Response to the first two NASA solar eclipse bulletins RP1301 (Annular Solar Eclipse of 1994 May 10) and RP1318 (Total Solar Eclipse of 1994 November 3) was overwhelming. Unfortunately, the demand quickly exceeded the limited number of bulletins printed with current levels of funding. To address this problem as well as allowing greater access to them, the eclipse bulletins were first made available via the Internet in April 1994. This was due entirely through the kind efforts and expertise of Dr. Joe Gurman (GSFC/Solar Physics Branch). All future eclipse bulletins will be available via Internet.

The NASA eclipse bulletins can be read or downloaded via the World-Wide Web server with a Mosaic or Netscape client from the GSFC SDAC (Solar Data Analysis Center) home page.

The top-level URL for the eclipse bulletins themselves are:

The original Microsoft Word text files and PICT figures (Macintosh format) are also available via anonymous ftp. They are stored as BinHex-encoded, StuffIt-compressed Mac folders with .hqx suffixes.

For PC's, the text is available in a zip-compressed format in files with the .zip suffix. There are three subdirectories for figures (GIF format), maps (JPEG format), and tables (html tables, easily readable as plain text). For example, NASA RP 1344 (Total Solar Eclipse of 1995 October 24 [=951024]) has a directory for these files as follows:

Other eclipse bulletins have a similar directory format.

Current plans call for making all future NASA eclipse bulletins available over the Internet, at or before publication of each. The primary goal is to make the bulletins available to as large an audience as possible. Thus, some figures or maps may not be at their optimum resolution or format. Comments and suggestions are actively solicited to fix problems and improve on compatibility and formats.

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