Cornwall Web cast offers close look at eclipse

The solar eclipse-viewing community spreads way beyond Cornwall today, thanks to IT innovations from scientists and Web start-ups.

Web casts have been adapted to suit the muddy fields of Cornwall. Data transfer specialists, Sardius, are aiming to set a world record by uploading ten simultaneous, live video feeds - without the benefit of a satellite link.

Sardius MD, Rob Harrison, told Silicon.com: "BT was charging too much, so we've had to come up with our own way of uploading data. We've multilinked 30 ISDN channels, using Cisco 4700 equipment, to create a 2MB pipe. This feeds to London's Telehouse, where it will be transmitted over the Web via RealNetworks."

Sardius worked in partnership with multimedia developer, Aurora Interactive, to build http://www.livereality.com . The site uses 22km of buried cable and a 40-ft portacabin with 4 encoder boxes and a PC-based edit suite.

NASA is going one step further. To avoid bad weather conditions on earth, it's sent a satellite into orbit to get the closest look at the sun since the last solar eclipse in 1927. The Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) will record temperatures, density and winds on the surface of the sun. Hourly video images will be broadcast to http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mpeg/

It is also broadcasting real-time images of the sun from a ship in the Black Sea to http://eclipse99.nasa.gov/