This is an edited version of the article published in the Medical Post Sept.21, 1999
Synopsis:
The Calgary Centre witnessed the eclipse of Aug. 11 successfully at
the ancient ruins
of Hasankeyf, Turkey near the city of Batman, and
6 days later
experienced an earthquake in Istanbul.
In the past 20 years, my wife Liz and I had seen 7 total eclipses of
the
sun and
there is no way
that we were going to miss the eclipse of Aug. 11, 1999. The
path went through
Cornwall England, France, Germany, eastern Europe and
on to the Middle
East. We finally decided on southeastern Turkey because the
chance of clear
skies was close to 90%, even though there was a Kurdish
insurrection going
on. One month before our departure, a terrorist murdered 4
people in a coffee
bar in Elazig, the city where we would be staying for 3 days.
In addition, a
Kurdish
spokesman warned tourists not to travel to Turkey.
Nonetheless, we
found ourselves in Elazig with the Calgary Centre expedition
under Don Hladiuk
and Alan Dyer.
On eclipse day, one hundred of us in two buses traveled for almost 4
hours
through the Kurdish
region of Turkey to the ancient ruins of Hasankeyf overlooking
the historic Tigris
River 75 km from the Syrian border. On our way, we passed
military checkpoints
with sandbags and machine gun nests. Several times our bus
was slowed to a
crawl by tanks.
The oppressive heat at Hasankeyf was as great as I’ve ever experienced.
We recorded
45 degrees C. in
the shade which dropped to the mid-30’s during totality.
In this furnace
we climbed a few hundred meters to a promontory overlooking the
River. Some
telescopes
were brought up by donkey. For 4 hours Liz and I stood in the
hot sun with no
shade because we could not leave our equipment. The eclipse site was
packed with
numerous local people who insisted that they were Kurds, and who wanted
to get in on the
action. We solved the problem by drawing a perimeter around our
site.
Three kind Kurdish
men helped us with crowd control. They understood that we were
doing “science”
and we had them watch the partial phases through our scope. We were
dizzy from
dehydration,
but the adrenalin of totality kept us going.
We had a fabulous view of the moon's shadow racing across the
Tigris
River valley.
The sun's corona
was more complex than any I've seen before with at least 7
large features and
was described as a crab. No feature was longer than 1 1/2 solar
diameters.
There were numerous small prominences all around, one of which was
detached from the
sun and another which looked like a tulip and another that looked
like a weird letter
M. Shadow bands were spectacular especially after totality. Venus
was beautiful near
the eclipsed sun; I was also successful in seeing Regulus with
small binoculars.
I was so taken up by the spectacle that I forgot to take pictures until
the diamond ring
at 3rd contact.
Quickly it was over and we watched the moon’s shadow rush away towards
Syria.
On Aug. 15, we had
the fortune of meeting Fred Espenak the famous eclipse predictor,
and his friend Pat
in our hotel in Cappadocia. We had a memorable eclipse dinner
together with
eclipse brandy with them and shared our experiences. Fred had
successfully
observed the eclipse
from Lake Hazar south of Elazig.
We thought we had
seen it all. The evening before flying home, we ate dinner on the roof
of our hotel in
Istanbul. We could see the Blue Mosque and heard the muezzin calling to
prayer at
sunset.
“What a beautiful ending to our trip,” Liz said. Little did we know
there
was more to come.
On the morning of Aug 17 at 3 a.m., about 40 of us were rudely
awakened
by the shaking
of our hotel , the
Armada, just within the city walls of Istanbul near the Blue mosque by
a
massive earthquake.
The quake roused me from a deep sleep. My bed was shaking back
and forth similar
to the turbulence of a frightening airplane ride. I screamed:
“earthquake.’
Liz jumped out of
bed and got dressed because she didn’t want to get caught in her pajamas
in case we had to
run outside. As I opened the window in a near panic, I heard
screaming
from hundreds of
nearby neighbours, glass breaking, babies crying, someone vomiting. Then
suddenly the city
went dark from a power failure and the constellations Orion and Taurus
shone
in a fearful clear
sky. None of us fortunately were hurt; the hotel had only a few
new
cracks on
the plastered walls.
Aftershocks persisted for an hour, at least 6 of them.
As we drove to the airport, we saw thousands of people on the streets
and
in the parks afraid
to return to their
homes, but no damage. Surprisingly, the airport was functioning well on
auxiliary power
and our flight to London left without incident.
We’ll never forget this eclipse expedition. Now it’s an impatient wait
for the next total eclipse
In Zambia in June
2001.
Photos from Turkeyurkey