Cezme,
Turkey
General: Time 15h03m, Alt. 06 degrees, Saros 153,
46.4 % (Max 75.7 %)
Turkish Delight
The Partial Solar Eclipse of 12 October 1996
Report by Patrick Poitevin
"Patrick Poitevin is one of those international agents of eclipse enforcement. He tracks them down all over the globe and arrests them on film. Last October, he had to hotfoot it over half of Turkey to arrest syzygy at sunset. The fugitive eclipse almost made a clean getaway, but two hours before first contact, Mr. Poitevin caught the sun in the open. On 12 October 1996, as the partially eclipsed sun made a stand over the Greek Island of Chios, Mr. Poitevin watched from the Ionian shore." Dr. Ed Krupp wrote in the Griffith Observer July 1997.
Although I knew the partial solar eclipse of 12 October 1996 would be visible from my home country, Belgium. I preferred to observe it at sunset. That shadow of the moon was scheduled to fail upon the earth first in northern Hudson Bay, where it would coincide with sunrise, and after passing across Canada, the north Atlantic, and Europe, it would occur at sunset in the Middle East. Accordingly, I decided to sidestep Spitsbergen (part of Norwegian Arctic island dependency in the Greenland Sea), Finland, Poland, Greece, and Israel, and targeted Turkey. I had nver been to Turkey before, and the price of the flight was right.
I arrived in Istanbul, Turkey, on Monday 7 October 1996. The sky was overcast, and it didn't look like the heavy clouds were going to leave any time soon. I tried to find weather forecasts for Istanbul and the rest of the country, but there seemed to be little local interest in the weather. Mosques and other tourist attractions were the main topics in the media, and naturally - but unfortunately - most people spoke Turkish, which I don't speak. I could have conversed with people in English, German, or French, but few Turks understood those languages.
Undaunted by language and clouds, I began to evaluate the two separate strategies I had devised to meet the eclipse. In plan A, I would travel est, across the top of the Anatolian peninsula, along the coast of the Black Sea, and watch the eclipse at about magnitude .50 (half of the diameter in eclipse) at sunset on the southwest shore. I caught trains and buses and steadily moved east toward Zonguldak (latitude 41 degrees 26 minutes north, longitude 31 degrees 47 minutes east), which was about 217 miles from the Bosporus. The more I traveled in that direction, the worse the weather turned. Even on the train, rain water sometimes poured onto my head.
I abandoned plan A and switched to pan B. I decided to reroute my eclipse path and aim for Kayseri, in the middle of the country. I thought I would try to reach the volcano Erciyes Dag, for I figured the volcano's summit would provide an exquisite view of the western horizon. The weather in that direction was just as bad, however. Local newspapers carried weather reports, but they didn't seem to be realiable. I decided I should develop plan C.
My only chance, I judged, would be a location to the west, on the lonian coast. There was more sun showing on that side of Turkey, if the weather reports were true. By then I had to race-hopping buses and trains-to reach the Mediterranean in time for sunset. Some local people told me I would arrive at the coast, at the fishing village of Cesme (latitude 38 degrees, 19 minutes, 31 seconds, north, longitude 26 degrees, 18 minutes, 9 seconds east) by 6.00 in the morning on the day of the eclipse. Others said I wouldn't get there until 9.00 am.
Neither estimate seemed to matter much, for the trip was just slow. The train pulled into the station at about noon, and I jumped onto a bus which carried me to the outer corner of the little peninsula that extends west of Izmir. I arrived in Cesme only two hours before first contact. The sky was wonderfully clear and beautifully blue. All I needed was a good spot to watch. So I stormed into a three-floor hotel and insisted on a room with a view toward the sea. Then minutes after I reached the room, I had the instruments unpacked and prepared to go. It was an incredible race, but the view was gorgeous. It seemed like a dream after all of the trouble I experienced the day before, I forgot, however, all of those frustrating complications and watched the sky. An old Flemish proverb confirms, "Luck is for the pigs." I was glad to be a pig.
Cesme hosts a medieval castle and is name for the therapeutic hot springs in the area. The Greek island Chios is directly to the west, and my eclipse would gradually descend behind the island.
By first contact, at 14 hours 0 minutes 15 seconds Universal time, the sun was 18 degrees above the horizon. The solar prominence filter loaned to me by my friend Derryl Barr in Nebraska, was acclimated. The sun, however, was not active. No sunspots or prominences were visible.
The magnitude of Cesme's maximum eclipse was calculated to be 0.464, and at the maximum eclipse, the sun was six degrees above the flat horizon. Because the filter reduced the brightness of the image so much, I switched to the solar-screen. As the sun fell lower and fainter, I observed with the pre-filter of the prominence filter. Finally, I jettisoned all filters and stayed on the sun's trail until 15 hours 36 minutes Universal Time, when I lost the partially-eclipsed disk behind the silhouette of Chios.
It was a beautiful partial solar eclipse. I am indebted to Derryl Barr for all of his effort in getting the solar filter and accessories to me. Had I seen sunspots and prominences, I would have used this equipment to measure their size. This partial solar eclipse was the nineteenth solar eclipse I had seen - the eighth in a continuouus string. I haven't missed any since 1993.
Note: Instrument C90 Celestron telescope with Olympus OM1 camera, film Agfa CTX 200, with Thousand Oaks prominence filter - on loan from Derryl Barr. Filter bandpass 1x1.5 at 6563 Angstrom.
Picture by Patrick Poitevin
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