Отправлено: 10.12.06 23:50. Заголовок: MY FIRST SOLAR ECLIPSE (Recollections, Part II)

This was in Cazanesti, the village where the secretary of Council of the village Maria Zaporojan registered my birth.

I was born in Balti, where my mother was a student at the pedagogical University. My father came to the Students house in Balti and took me and my mother to ours house in Cazanesti on the Raut river.

We had a happy and sunny childhood in this village, in spite of ours house was scarce. This house was an old one. This house was one of a family , which left Bessarabia in 1940 or 1944, probably. My parents came to this village from Chitcanii-Vechi where they married in May month of 1952.


Ours first school was near the CHURCH, which was closed during the Soviet times. I came to the school in 1961 and Val in 1963. Ours first teachers were Vasile Condrat Dorofei and Maria Stefan Cuiban (my) and Valentina Teodosie Carlan (Val's). Valentina Teodosie Carlan had two children : Slavic (Veacheslav) and Liuda (Ludmila) which where ours friends. Igor Cuiban, the son of Maria Stepanovna (so we told that times), was my friend also.


Dorofei taught us primary disciplines in the absence of Maria Stepan Cuiban, later sports and mathematics. Maria Stepan Cuiban was ours teacher of caligraphy and writing.

I learned in the school near the church 3 years and then I moved to the main school, which had two buildings. In the smallest building I learned in 1964-1965, while subsequently I learned in the biggest building. I recollect also that the same times we moved with the family to other house on the Stadium. This was a good house, just near the school, with a small land, where we planted fruit trees, vineyard and vegetables.


I recollect, that once at the finish of the school year, i.e. on 20 may we observed a Solar eclipse. I calculated (i.e. more exactly I tried to recollect the year) and this was very difficult to do. Then I called to one of my colleagues, Iulia Climentovschi, from the school and asked She concerning the year of the eclipse. She do not know anything concerning the year of the eclipse, in spite of she recollect well that we seen the eclipse.

This was a very short eclipse. I understand now, that, probably, my father, which was the director of the school (since 1955 till 1959, and 1962-till 1967) received from Telenesti (ours county center) a telegrame, concerning the eclipse, and He with Dorofei (which was the only teacher of mathematics and physics in the school) organized the observation of the the eclipse. We destroyed a bottle, subsequently flamed them and made filters to see the Sun. Dorofei told us , that we could observe the Sun only using the glasses.

This was just in the morning about 8:00 Local Time, or 6:00 Universal Time (UT), when we prepared glasses. Then we waited for the eclipse. The expectations were very long in time and some of the children, confussed the eclipse with glasses itself.

The geographical coordinates of the village of Cazanesti are: 47Deg 37' North Latitude (NL) and 28 Deg 28,3' Eeast Longitude (EL). We observed the eclipse with all the schoolars, including the schoolars from the Primary school. Almost all the schoolars had glasses, but no any schoolar was interested to see the eclipse. As obviously many children gamed. My brother gamed also, but at the moment of the eclipse He camed close to me and told me:" -Alex let me to see the eclipse, Please!" This was just a very short moment and I gave him the glass to see the eclipse.

According to [1] the duration of the eclipse was 5 seconds only, Saros 137. The greatest eclipse was at 9:38 Universal Time (UT) or 11:28 Local Time. The magnitude of the eclipse was 0.999, i.e. this was an Anular Eclipse (i.e. just a very narrow ring of light near the Sun's disk could be observed on the annularity line). The annularity line begun in Atlantic Ocean (7h54,1 m UT ) passed the Africa (Guineea (near Conacry) , Mali, South Algeria, Libya (the eclipse left Tripoli at 9h05m UT), Mediteranean Sea, South Greece (South from Athens), Turkey (between Istanbul and Ankara), Black Sea, few km North from Stavropol (at 10 h 15m UT), Astrakhan (10h26m UT), Balkshach (11h02m UT), China (36Deg North Latitutude (NL), 114 East Longitude (EL), at 11h22,06m UT) [2]. The largest annularity line width was 69 km.

But outside a narrow annularity line the eclipse was a partial one, with the magnitude depending on the distance from the annularity line.

We seen a very short coverage of the Sun (about few seconds). A shadow passed the Sun's disk instantly. It was dark for a very short time. If I do not make a confussion about 90 percents or more of the Sun's disk was covered. The day was very sunny with no clouds. The temperature of the air was about 10-15 degrees.

We go after the eclipse to the Stadium and we stayed there a time. This day was the last one of the school year or one of the last days. The vacations were very close. Could somebody tell me the year of the ECLIPSE, please?



1. N. Popescu, E. Coporan and M.D. Suran: Romanian Astronomical Journal vol. 9, No.1, pp. 93-101, Bucharest, 1999

2. Meeus, J. Ciel et Terre, Vol. 82, p. 51