Pursuits : Packing the Family for a Solar Eclipse

Eric Adams for The New York Times

Kimberly Adams and her daughters, Alice and Lucy, watch the eclipse through special glasses a few minutes before totality.

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Eric Adams for The New York Times

The moon slides out of alignment after a total solar eclipse over Australia last November.

These are among the many things that last longer than a total solar eclipse.

So taking a 37-hour journey from my home in Pennsylvania to north Queensland, Australia, to view such a fleeting event may not seem like a natural vacation, especially not with your family in tow. But the promise of a prime viewing spot was all it took for me, an astronomy enthusiast, to book a trip last November.

I would be joining the legions of people you could call astrotourists, who, undaunted by the prospect of a cloudy day, travel extraordinary distances for the opportunity to glimpse the latest ex-orbital phenomena. Sure, a meteor streaking across the sky is flashy, especially when it's not expected, but to us, seeing a total solar eclipse is the holy grail, an experience so priceless you wouldn't hesitate to subject yourself and your wife and your young daughters to the time and expense of a 12,000-mile trip to see one. (What's 12,000 miles when you consider the 200,000-odd miles between the Earth and the Moon?)

I'd dreamed of what it must be like to witness an eclipse for years. I'd marveled at images of them. And I knew, from the hours spent gazing through my telescopes at star clusters, galaxies and planets, that firsthand astronomical observations always trumped photos in books or on computer screens. It becomes an experience — eyepiece views of Saturn and Jupiter are imprinted in my memory in ways Hubble pictures are not. Eclipses, I had heard, were in yet another league. They feel close, powerful. They turn day to night, and reveal our star's complex, gauzy atmosphere in the space of minutes.

"It really is an amazing visual experience that can become a life-changer for some people," said Paul Maley, a retired NASA engineer who organizes eclipse trips with Ring of Fire Expeditions, one of dozens of operators that cater to astrotourists. "People get different things out of it, and even after seeing more than 40 eclipses, I'm still surprised by how people react. One guy on a trip to Indonesia was so freaked out he hyperventilated. We had to get him a paper bag."

Though I hoped it wouldn't come to that for my daughters, Lucy, 11, and Alice, 8, or my wife, Kimberly, I did want us to share a life-altering experience. This particular one was visible only in far north Queensland. And if the eclipse was a bust, there was a fail-safe: we would be within easy distance of the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian Outback and lush rain forests.

We arrived at our destination, Port Douglas, a resort town an hour north of Cairns, a few days before the eclipse. It was sunny and warm. We checked in to our boutique hotel — the Apartments at the White House — and passed time splashing in the waters of Four Mile Beach a block away, strolling a strip of upscale restaurants and stores that made up the downtown, and exploring nearby Daintree Rain Forest in our rental car. In the evenings, we walked along the beach. The town, then in the off-season, buzzed as it would amid an Australian summer. Thousands of eclipse-chasers had flooded Port Douglas — among more than 50,000 that came to northern Queensland for the event. (Maley's tour group stayed in Cairns.) The coming eclipse dominated local chatter online, on the air and on the streets.

The day before the eclipse, however, any sense of relaxation I felt vanished when I walked out to the beach before dawn. The horizon above the Coral Sea was filled with puffy clouds. I wasn't alone in my worry. Dozens of other chasers who had come from Asia, the Middle East, the United States, Europe and other points in Australia scanned the sky. Many had no backup plans. Because rental cars were scarce, Port Douglas was their only option. I suddenly felt extremely grateful that I had reserved a car six months in advance.

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