Hunting for the Sun

The whole world will be able to watch the eclipse on Wednesday

As you know, a person can look at three things without stopping - fire, water and how others work. All of humanity will have to face the first hypnotic element in just a few days. On March 29, the world is preparing to watch an eclipse of the fiery solar disk. Hundreds of astronomers of all nationalities are already flocking to the area of ​​the Turkish resort of Antalya. According to a statement by specialists from the American National Aerospace Agency, Turkey will be the most convenient place to observe the eclipse. The total solar eclipse in Antalya will be visible for 3 minutes 11 seconds. The shadow will cover a strip of 156 km from the Western Mediterranean to the eastern Black Sea. American scientists have installed their telescopes in the Antalya suburb of Side. By the way, from here there will be a live television broadcast of the observation of the cosmic phenomenon, which will probably be shown by the CNN channel.

Another group of specialists, including our compatriots, will use the Russian telescope installed at the astronomical observatory on Mount Saklikent near Antalya and which is one of the largest in Europe. Astronomers will study solar flares that activate during an eclipse. “While the temperature on the Sun is about six thousand degrees, in the corona of the sun it reaches several million. We still don’t know exactly why this happens, and on the 29th we will carry out work to study solar flares,” observatory employee Tuncay Ozyshik shared his plans with Russian journalists.

An international experiment to study the solar corona will take place on Wednesday in the mountains of Kabardino-Balkaria, at the highest mountain observatory in Europe, the Terskol Observatory. The height of the observatory is about 3 thousand meters above sea level, it is equipped with a powerful telescope. Here the total solar eclipse will begin at 15.00 Moscow time, the duration of the total phase will reach 3 minutes 17 seconds. More than fifty astronomers from Russia, Ukraine and other countries have already arrived in the village at the foot of Elbrus. As Alexander Sergeev, deputy director of the Terskol branch of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the ITAR-TASS agency, specialists from seven countries are taking part in the experiment. Scientists from Holland donated seven unique, expensive radiation detectors to the observatory, which will allow more accurate polarimetric and spectral measurements of the solar corona.

It is noteworthy that the upcoming solar eclipse has already brought anxiety to people who are far from scientific excitement. Thus, in Turkey, rumors have become widespread that the eclipse can cause an earthquake. Last week, in the city of Niksar, 400 km east of Ankara, local residents even began setting up tents on the streets to wait out the dangerous phenomenon. The reason for the mass “tourist rally” was publications in local media, recalling that it was after a solar eclipse in August 1999 that a devastating earthquake occurred in northwestern Turkey. The management of the country's main seismological observatory, Bosphorus University, urges fellow citizens not to panic and states that science does not have data on the connection between the solar eclipse and the earthquake. However, it seems that no one wants to take the risk and test this connection for themselves.

Kirill VASILENKO