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This is how a 'total solar eclipse' is called in Turkish...
A total eclipse of the Sun is one of the most spectacular predictable natural phenomena !
The rare event is often loaded with ecstatic superlatives : beautiful, magnificent, gorgeous, impressive, awe-inspiring, grandiose, thrilling, enravishing, surprising, amazing, fascinating, exciting, breath-catching, sensational, mesmerizing, evocative, fantastic, enchanting, fairy-like, unreal, wonderful, apocalyptic, hallucinating, mysterious, incredible, unimaginable, beyond description, ...
Bystanders can also react extremely different ; from totally indifferent (apathetic) to hysterical. In short, the emotionally-tainted unique spectacle of light and shadow should be experienced just by oneself...

Contrary to happy loony umbraphiles, I am in no way addicted to total solar eclipses, but when one occurs somewhere in a place also worth visiting, then...
Because of its geographical proximity, the last total solar eclipse of the twentieth century and the millennium, to happen on Wednesday August 11 1999, had already been booked years ahead as my second, after the one I observed from Santiago Ixcuintla (Mexico) on July 11 1991.
The weather statistics for the south of Belgium or northern France did not really need to confirm my intuitive worst presumptions for this part of the world...
A first potential target - Munich/Germany - revolved in my mind for some time, but I canceled it for the same reason.
Finally I decided in favour of eastern Turkey (in July 1997 I visited the rest of the country), with Syria and Jordan as primary travel destinations.
When I plotted the centre line of totality on a map, it appeared to be nearly crossing the village of Bağdere (Başnik), 54 km (33.6 mi) northeast of the Kurdish capital Diyarbakır, thus an ideal location to witness my second cosmic wink, unless some better observing spot would be suggested to me over there.
From the travel report of Robert Yen I later learned there was also a Belgian group in the vicinity with among them 'the brother of Flanders' best-known umbraphile (Patrick Poitevin)'...
Suited sites were fitted up for the numerous visitors and no pains were spared to please the eclipse revellers.
Some major historical cities along the obscured eclipse path were especially promoted, as these are easily reachable and possess the infrastructure to lure and accommodate tourists : Bartın, Kastamonu, Çorum, Merzifon, Amasya, Turhal, Tokat, Sivas, Elazığ, Diyarbakır, Batman, Cizre.
As usual various cultural happenings were organised for the occasion.
Near Amasya the eclipse was accompanied by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.
At Harput (near Elazığ) an international host of scientists had gathered and set up their instruments.
Real eclipse chasers are to be found at spots closer to the central line...

During my tour of Jordan I stayed (August 4/5) amidst the grandiose scenery of Wadi Rum ; I slept in the sandy desert beneath the brilliant stars with the Milky Way spread across the sky and the Moon and Venus before sunrise.
On August 9, after completing my Syrian and Jordanian program, I took the night bus to Diyarbakır from Hatay (Antakya, Antioch on the Orontes). There I met John Sestak, a 27-year old music student from Chicago with the same travel intentions ; he had formed some vague idea about a total solar eclipse and wanted to see for himself 'what all this hype is about'.
We traveled together for the next two days.
Upon arrival, by coincidence around the time of sunrise, I promptly but vainly tried to locate the narrow lunar crescent using my 21 mm (.827 in) monocular (magnifying 8 times).
A 37-year old traffic policeman, Muzaffer Duran, immediately took us under his care. For security reasons foreign guests were watched closely because this was Kurdistan and they wanted to avoid problems with the P.K.K. (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, Kurdistan Workers' Party). This grouping got into the news before with the abduction of foreigners.
John was particularly apprehensive (an American hostage is probably much more valuable than some silly dioxin-riddled Belgian).
During my travels I'm always receptive to some excitement because this is the stuff for telling tall stories !
Muzaffer just finished his (night) shift. He acted spontaneously and disinterested as a guide and interpreter for us, probably seizing the perfect opportunity for practicing his English. And because he had the next day off I invited him to join us ; he apparently enjoyed E-day very much.
The city of Diyarbakır was exactly what I imagined it to be ; deadly dull.
To me it was merely the right starting point for finding a suited spot to observe the solar eclipse. John wanted to climb the city walls (the dark-grey basalt structure cannot touch the picturesque walls surrounding the Spanish city of Ávila) and watch the eclipse from here. When I told him that totality lasted significantly less here than at Bağdere, he changed his mind.
Contrary to Tepic (Mexico) hotel rooms were still sufficiently available at Diyarbakır, even at the city centre, and the price was right as well.
The tourist information office (where - and this is not exceptional in Turkey - they only knew Turkish) just offered me one not particularly useful leaflet about the eclipse...
At various places in Diyarbakır I noticed a poster on which the Sun was totally covered by some conspicuous typical regional produce, an enormous striped green watermelon.

In the early afternoon I decided to scout my planned observing spot ; the bus stop for Silvan (and Bağdere) was located near the hotel.
Several kilometers (miles) before Bağdere we passed by a heavily-armed army checkpoint (there were some tanks). The army was also conspicuously present at Bağdere. When I caught the bus back to Diyarbakır, the identity of all the other passengers was promptly checked !
During my stay in Turkey I traveled through Kurdistan for most of the time and noticed checkpoints on several occasions (on the trip between Van and Adana I was checked three times, once even my backpack was searched).
Bağdere is an agricultural area consisting of scarcely more than farms, little trees and shrubs here and there, surrounded by a shelving landscape of extensive corn- and other fields. Most crops had already been harvested.
Workers were earnestly fitting up a terrain for the many expected visitors tomorrow. I had cherished the hope of finding myself alone out there 'in the middle of nowhere'... The ideal location of this place must have been divulged far and wide, considering the large turn-out and motley international company...
Meanwhile a herd of Japanese tourists was testing the publicly accessible seating facilities and tents.
On the return bus I met three English-speaking Japanese, the spokesman of whom told me that this would be his third total solar eclipse ; he was also present at the event in Mexico.

In the evening John and I went to an Internet café where I sent an E-mail to a couple of Miranese (fellow-members of Mira Public Observatory) with my local findings for... E-day !

Next morning I watched the weather map from my hotel room on some Turkish television station, predicting 39 °C (102.2 °F) for Diyarbakır ; in the full Sun and open-air at Bağdere it surely will have been a few degrees hotter...
Muzaffer was present, this time wearing leisure togs.
We provided ourselves with the necessary provisions.
The 10 o'clock bus was already full and all standing-room got crowded.
Many passengers were foreigners.
A conspicuous American was showing his (unsafe) frivolous eclipse shades ; the most suggestive body part of some lass in a provocative posture had been replaced by two dark photographic film strips...
Somebody at the reception desk of our hotel had used an equally dangerous dark X-ray photograph as a solar filter...
Failed information campaigns ?
I had brought mine from Belgium but would have preferred a Turkish one as a souvenir instead, as in Mexico. The policeman had inquired for it during our guided tour of Diyarbakır, without luck, at various opticians and pharmacies. A solution was offered only in a do-it-yourself store ; a welder's glass. Muzaffer carried one on E-day but I found the green image much too bright.
At the site a medley of apparently safe eclipse shades were used.

A banner welcomed us (in Turkish) and we received a visitor's token (a piece of paper and pin).
The army and security police were present.
A fire engine and ambulance stood ready at hand.
The terrain had been fitted up with tents, chairs and tables, socles, sound equipment, Internet access, ... and the obligatory stalls selling special T-shirts, caps and other gadgets, titbits and potions, ...
A small television crew gathered some images.
Many cars and busses delivered ever more people ; you could almost walk on heads.
We looked for the shadow beneath a tent, where the mayor of Silvan (further down the road) came to shake our hand, and an aged German-Swiss couple told me that the weather was lousy in Europe.
Music and dances from a folkloristic band provided for some distraction.
Speakers belched Anglo-American pop music.
As the magical moment was nearing the noise died down and fortunately only Sun and Moon drew the attention.

During a walk around the place I noticed a Flemish family with young children in the crowd ; a V.V.S. veteran (Bart Hendrickx, member of the Vereniging Voor Sterrenkunde, the Flemish Astronomical Association) had just flown in with his wife and offspring from the beach holiday near Antalya, to experience their first total solar eclipse.
He vainly tried to reach Belgium with his mobile phone to inquire about the meteorological conditions over there.
I lured them to 'my' tent (where Muzaffer and John were cooling down) to show 'the trick with the pinholes' ; in the morning we had bought two sheets of paper taped together for this purpose.
The meshes of the dark-brown canvas provided the tiny holes, a supplied table and our sheet of paper served as an improvised projection surface. This way you could see the partial eclipse evolving by watching the numerous motionless projected little solar images from the comfort of a chair in the shade, some cool drink at hand, and safely without solar shades ! It took a while before the dented Sun became clearly visible.
The astronomy club member remarked that the projected images were mirrored (but also upside down) as predicted. For a brief moment I could attract the attention of the kids with this, but they were more preoccupied by their Game Boy...
I again demonstrated the pinhole experiment a couple of hundred meters (yards) further away, beneath the canopy of brushwood, to a group of bystanders who were clearly mesmerized by the many dancing solar crescents.
There was also a white cloth spread out on the grass onto which one could project solar crescents 'manually' (through small gaps between crossed fingers) ; Muzaffer and I couldn't resist trying this as well...
John told me afterwards that someone had used a setup of holes to project a message with tiny solar crescents, and found this a 'cool' idea !
On July 29 I was strolling in the Syrian capital through the Al Hamidiyeh souk leading straight to the Omayyad Great Mosque ; its lofty iron vaulting was strewn with tiny gaps throwing about 15 cm (6 in) wide clear solar disks onto the pavement. During E-day the evolving solar crescents must surely have caught the attention of the numerous passers-by. Moreover, the (lunar) crescent (and star) are Islamic symbols (e.g. present in the Turkish flag), so maybe these sickles may have been interpreted as 'a sign from heaven' by unsuspecting Muslims ?!
An advertisement in my Damascus hotel mentioned an organised eclipse expedition to the outmost north-eastern tip of Syria. Just as in Belgium, totality could only be observed in an out-of-the-way corner of the country. I added a copy of my eclipse maps to change the minds of potential eclipse tourists...
Back home I learned the Syrian authorities had even proclaimed E-day an official holiday !

Turkish and Kurdish bystanders were fascinated by the optical and electronic apparatus some were showing off here. The unusual concentration of strange sorts of birds (including myself) attracted otherwise sufficiently the attention, even without all these expensive gadgets...
My solar shades and monocular passed from hand to hand.
Near the bushes an isolated group of North-American eclipse chasers had set up sophisticated instruments (including a G.P.S. receiver) ; I glanced through one of their scopes.
One of them told me that we were about a kilometer (less than a mile) from the central line, and that here totality even lasted hundredths of a second longer than near the crowd further away, depending on whose calculations you considered correct of course...
Some telescopic observers reported solar spots.
In the distance I noticed a coach with more isolated observers.

A gathering of threatening clouds provided some extra tension before and during the first partial phase but fortunately these quickly disappeared again, so the rest of the show took place under almost clear skies.
In the shade of the brushwood a bunch of turkeys were doing their thing in chorus (Muzaffer found the English word for these birds very funny, but 'turkey' is also American slang for 'failure, flop'...). Watching the birds' behaviour during totality could yield an interesting observation. Afterwards John told me he didn't notice any striking changes in their behaviour... Perhaps because the animals were already eclipsed by the shadow of the shrubs ?
Muzaffer and John would watch 'it' from here.
I was looking for a spot not too far from the pack of people (to observe their reactions), with a view on the horizon. I met the German-Swiss couple again in some reapt cornfield ; they had dragged a chair along with them.
The intensity of the sunlight decreased rapidly, veiling the surroundings with a strange (bluish-grey ?) light which contrasted vividly with the yellow-gold of the clipped blades of straw. Surreal !
Shadows became sharply outlined.
Temperature dropped considerably.
I tried to block the remaining interfering rays of sunlight with one hand to find Venus ; after a while I succeeded.
Second contact of the Moon with the solar disk was drawing near.
And then... SNAP, the light was switched off !
Sudden falling darkness was spontaneously regaled with applause, shouts of joy, whistles, and a volley of... flashing cameras.
The buzzing of the crowd died down to an intense silence.
Chills went up my spine !
With the unaided eye one could discern the nearly round shape of the solar corona, an indication that solar activity is peaking, exactly the opposite of what I saw at my first total experience in 1991.

This image approximates what our eyes can see.
Displaying the wide range of brightnesses in the solar corona
requires complex instruments and involves lots of subtle processing.

A glance at the surrounding horizon did, oddly enough, not show the normal red wreath but only a faint yellow glow. Scattered or subdued by a dust layer ?
I quickly aimed my monocular towards the eclipsed Sun.
Through this small telescope numerous gossamer streamers could be seen in the tenuous corona ! The rim of the eclipsed solar disk was dotted all along by spectacularly bright typically pinkish-red whopping prominences ; gasp ! But then I expected this, considering the much smaller difference between the apparent sizes of Sun and Moon (in the sky) compared to 1991.
I observed my first total solar eclipse only with the unaided eye, so I must have missed a few things at the time...
And then, suddenly, everything was over... although not quite yet because the departing lunar shadow cone was impressive to watch as it hastily rushed on at approximately 2700 km/h (nearly 1700 mi/h) ; some large amorphous dark spot, completely blotting out the south-eastern horizon (the opposing skyline was already lit by sunlight), shrank in no time !
I intended to time the duration of totality ('officially' it lasted 2m12s here), but forgot it again ; too flabbergasted and mesmerized by the sight of it all...
Shortly after third contact John noticed a rippling shadow moving along the ground ; 'shadow bands' ?!
You simply lacked senses to observe all phenomena !
The American was impressed : "I think I will remember this place for a long time to come !".
The next total eclipse of the Sun that'll cross Turkey happens on March 29 2006.

The European geostationary spare weather satellite Meteosat 6
(EUMetSat, European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, Darmstadt/Germany)
captured the progress of the total solar eclipse across Europe.

Totality lasted for more than three hours, so during this time millions of people along the shadow path will have looked skywards ; from ground level (amongst them the first and sixth Moon walkers, Neil Alden Armstrong from Iran and Edgar Dean Mitchell from Bouillon/Belgium), at sea (on the Black Sea a flotilla of cruise ships lay waiting for the lunar shadow), from the air (by two supersonic Concorde jetliners over the Atlantic Ocean), and for the first time from space by cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station Mir (Viktor Afanasyev, Sergei Avdeyev, Jean-Pierre Haigneré).

The 105 km (65 mi) wide lunar shadow (umbra)
was photographed over the cloudy English Channel around 10h13m U.T.C.,
by Jean-Pierre Haigneré from Mir (over the Massif Central).
The dots in the sky are the planets Saturn (left) and Jupiter.

Major parts of Europe were under the eclipse spell ; eclipse madness caused migrations of people. Alas, bad weather was the spoil-sport. Many only saw overcast skies, bits of the 'banal' partial phases, or had luck on their side during a sporadic clear period (chances for clear skies steadily increased towards the east ?).
Flemish public astronomical observatories staged various expeditions.
The day trip to Coucy-le-Château (near Laon, northern France), organised by Mira Public Observatory (Grimbergen), ran up against the clouds (only bits of the partial phases were visible there).
Eclipse tourists at Munich/Germany encountered... clouds (with one exception).
Thus for many the celestial event will have been a big disappointment...

When the Sun reappeared from behind the Moon, interest in the final partial phase quickly waned ; the magic was gone...
The whole fun fair hastily evacuated. Public amusement was over.
The remaining eclipse show could equally no longer attract our attention. We let somebody hurriedly take our picture and caught a minibus back to Diyarbakır.
On it two Turkish girls, wearing the typical Muslim head-shawl (I forgot its exact name), told us they were praying to Allah during totality (according to tradition the founder of Islam, the prophet Mohammed, allegedly prayed during an eclipse). Next thing they tried to foist some obscure religious literature upon us. Time and again unusual natural phenomena evoke irrational behaviour in receptive tribes...
Back at Diyarbakır we again let some helpful hand take another two pictures of our threesome, with the grey city wall as a back-drop. The sheet of paper now served for subtitling :
'Turkish-American-Belgian Expedition, Eclipse 1999, Bağdere/Turkey'...
At the Internet corner of the post-office I showed my Web page dedicated to the total solar eclipse in Mexico.
As I was waiting in the evening to catch the night bus for Van (on the lake of the same name), I watched an extensive Turkish report about the eclipse on television ; most of the eclipse imagery from Europe was wrapped in clouds (Belgium wasn't mentioned).
Because I don't know Turkish, it would have been without point to buy local newspapers the day after the event (many front pages carried pictures of the eclipse) ; at Van I vainly tried to get the English language newspaper Turkish Daily News.
On the long return trip from Van to Adana I passed Bağdere again, with the two days old narrow lunar crescent low on the horizon, a fitting farewell...

I left İstanbul August 16 ; less than 24 hours later (August 17 at 00:01:39.8 U.T.C., two hours later local time), northwestern Turkey was hit by a severe earthquake (7.4 on the Richter scale, the epicentre lay at a depth of 17 km (10.5 mi), 40° 42' north, 29° 59' east, 11 km (7 mi) southeast of İzmit = Kocaeli) making many thousands of casualties...
Was I just lucky (the historical city centre where I was staying appears to have been spared), or did I simply miss this spectacular unpredictable natural phenomenon (disaster tourism) ?

The obscure experience was the apotheosis of a very successful and for the rest smoothly passed holiday trip. With memories to cherish.
Next one beckons...


Next total eclipse of the Sun ?!


References.


Image credits.


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Last updated Sunday March 19 2000.
Herwig Ronsmans.