Hi folks,
there is so much to tell about my journey, even though it was only four days including the travel to Konya and back. We made an expedition to the incredible landscape of
Cappadocia. (See the
German wikipedia entry for more pics.) But I'll concentrate on the eclipse here.
This is the very first report I write. I haven't looked at any pictures yet in order to make sure that my own memory can settle first. I haven't even listened to my own tape recordings yet, so the following is purely what I remember now.
We went to a place about 60 kilometres from Konya, Turkey, with a group of about 100 people. It was a very lonely site near the central line of the eclipse. A landscape of dry, rocky hills without any trees or bushes, just some sparse vegetation between the stones. The shadow of the moon was due to come in from the Southwest, and that's approximately where the sun was standing during totality, too. A few kilometres to the Northeast - "behind" us - was a larger village with the mandatory mosque.
We arrived a few hours before first contact and had enough time to set up our equipment. I only had a small and simple telescope and a pair of binoculars with me, but I was quite excited anyway - due to the plane travel I had had to disassemble it completely for the first time. All went fine, though, so I had enough time until first contact and could help Alexander a little - a great eclipse friend of mine with whom I had been to Zambia five years ago and who observed right next to me. The other observer in my vicinity was Bernhard, Alexander's cousin. We had enough space for ourselves; perhaps because I really had put up warning signs around us.
As I went down the hill to get our lunch packets a flock of sheep went by, followed by the shepherd and his donkey. Too bad I didn't have my camera with me at that moment - the sheep in front of those telescopes would have been a great image! I lost track of the herd later, but another observer told me they had huddled together for totality.
As first contact approached I looked at the sun through my telescope at a magnification of 56, which shows the sun completely filling the field of view. As soon as I saw the tiny dent made by the moon I shouted "Contact!". Apparently I was the first to see the moon because the others went "Really? Where?" and then, one by one, "Yeah, I see it, there it is!". A few seconds after the sighting in the telescope I could recognize the moon with the binoculars, too, then finally by the naked eye.
The weather was a problem. There was a clearer patch to the Southwest, but above us there were thin cirrus clouds. We didn't know what they would do - move away, dissolve, strengthen - so we stayed where we were and hoped for the best.
Through my telescope I could see three small sunspots which were invisible to smaller devices. They were near the solar limb and would be covered by the moon just before totality.
The first partial phase of a total solar eclipse is always dominated by mounting excitement. I made some souvenir photos of people with their equipment. A few people asked me to look through my scope, and I helped them with that. Bernhard gave an interview to a local TV station, and they just loved him because he spoke a few words of Turkish and said very, very friendly things about the country. Behind us, some of the observer still took it all very easily, joking and laughing.
About half an hour before totality I put up an eye patch. This is a trick to make sure that at least one eye is adapted to darkness when totality comes. I've used it with great success in Zambia 2001 and wanted to do it again.
The cloud pattern virtually didn't change during all that time. It was clear that we would have to observe totality through the cirrus layer. That meant we would lose a lot of corona, but we would see something of the black sun in any case - it really didn't look like any thicker clouds would still appear.
I looked out for subtle changes in the environment. Well yes, it was clearly cooler and the light was diminished. But it was hard to tell how much of that was due to the clouds and how much due to the eclipse. However, with a few minutes to totality there was no doubt anymore: The landscape was in a dull kind of twilight which got darker by the minute. The sun was a very aesthetic thin crescent in the sky - blazingly bright, but too small to illuminate the land properly. The tension was almost tangible - even the jokers behind us had gone almost silent now. The only sounds people made were sounds of tense expectation and astonishment, and it got darker and darker around us by the second.
With trembling hands I turned to observe the last crescent through the telescope. As I looked up once more the Southwestern sky was yet darkening. Knowing what else to look for I turned around and yes, in the Northeastern sky there lay an eerie and gloomy yellow light. I pointed that out to the others and returned to the telescope.
The solar crescent was rapidly vanishing. I tore off the solar filter: The final Baily's beads were shrinking away as the last sunrays reached me through some lunar valleys, and thus began totality. Also, a bright pinkish-red hem was visible, the famous chromosphere of the sun. I began to scream my head off as I saw one cloud of the same colur floating above the solar limb and then even a second one - prominences! They were beautiful, of delicate, complex structure, and at least one was detached. I shouted my observations at the world in general; I hoped to get them on my tape recorder and hoped to help the others to watch out for these phenomena if they hadn't found them themselves yet.
The chromosphere vanished within seconds as the moon progressed in its orbit and covered that outer layer of the sun, too.
I left the telescope and looked at the sun - at the black sun! The corona was smaller and showed less detail than in Zambia, but that was to be expected due to the clouds. Still it was immensely beautiful! There was a very bright ring around the black disk of the new moon, and weaker rays extended into the sky. I took off the eye patch and looked again, and really: With the dark-adapted eye I could see a little more of the corona. I could recognise the typical shape of the corona at a minimum of solar activity. There were fine but short streams near the solar poles, and the corona extended further into space near the solar equator. I even saw one or two darker rays in the equator region, so I recognised streams there, too.
The other observers had virtually disappeared for me. In the beginning I had still heard Alexander cheering. Later I heard someone mention that the lights had gone on in the village behind us, so I turned around and saw it with its lamps on in that untimely dusk. Someone pointed out Venus just above the Western horizon, and there it was: Right beneath the cloud layer, blazingly bright in the "all-around-sunset". While the skies above looked grey instead of deep blue due to the clouds, the horizon had taken on bright and vivid colours of orange and yellow, just as if the sun had set
everywhere around us, not just to the West.
I looked up at the black sun again, still amazed by the brightness of that innermost corona. The lunar disk didn't look as black as it had under the clear skies in Zambia. The clouds must have scattered the coronal light, thus brightening up the disk.
As I looked at the black sun through my binoculars two more prominences appeared on the Western limb. I shouted that out, too, and put the binoculars away. The prominences were so huge that they could easily be seen by the naked eye. Following them, the chromosphere appeared again. It was so much thicker than I had expected, a massive and growing hem over about one quarter of the lunar limb. Beautiful as it was, it also heralded the end of totality. I looked down to protect my eyes from the first ray of sunlight shooting through some lunar valley. The crowd cheered up again and started to applause, while I just stood there with my arms up high, the palms stretched out to the sun as a final greeting. At the same time it got brighter by the second all around us, and the hills behind us brightened up as well as the lunar shadow receded from our site.
You can imagine the following minutes: Enthusiastic cheering. Laughter. Embraces. Tears. Alexander and I hugged each other very hard. We jumped around with joy, lost balance and rolled over the ground.
A short while later I fell very silent with watering eyes.
I embraced those that I knew at least little from the past few days and talked to some of the other observers. It was especially impressive to hear those that had had their first glance of the black sun. One of our tour organizers had tears in here eyes, too, and I caught the other organizer, who is said to smoke hardly ever at all, with a "cigarette after". They all confirmed what Adalbert Stifter had written down in 1842 and what many others had said after him, including myself: You can read as many eclipse reports and nowadays view as many pictures as videos as you like, but nothing can prepare you for totality. You really must experience it to believe.
The rest is quickly told. Many took down their equipment and went to the busses even during the second partial phase, as the moon was still hiding a part of the sun. The more serious observers waited with that - among them Alexander, Bernhard and myself, of course. We watched the moon leaving the sun completely, observed right through to the fourth contact, to the end of the eclipse.
Oh well, and although time was very limited all during that journey we celebrated the success with a good long dinner, some wine and some more talk with coffee and Raki in the bar. That also meant good-bye because I'd have to leave very early the following morning.
Now we're all thinking about how to reach the next one!
Please be patient about the pics. I haven't taken any pictures of the eclipse itself, and the photos of the people and the equipment aren't digital. I'll give you links to the sites of the others where they publish their pics as soon as possible.
Cheers!
Markus
