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Celestial show grips world(Kuwait Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)KUWAIT: The faithful said prayers, astronomers and thrill-seekers gazed in awe and dervishes whirled in Turkey as a total eclipse of the sun turned day into night yesterday on a path halfway round the world. Carving a narrow band over northwest Africa and parts of the Middle East, the eclipse expired on the steppes of the Russo-Mongolian frontier three hours and 14,500 km after it began in northeast Brazil. In Kuwait, well-known astronomer Adel Al-Sadoun invited some diplomats and members of the media to his Fintas Observatory to watch the eclipse. The partial solar eclipse started around 1.00 pm and peaked at 2.15 pm. The modern telescope at the observatory allowed the guests to watch the eclipse moment by moment. The eclipse stages were clearly visible using both the special sunglasses and the telescope. It started when the moon's shadow passed in front of the sun at 13:15 pm. This is called the 'first contact' between the sun and the moon. Then the shadow reached in the middle of the sun and covered 55 per cent of it at 2:26 pm. Then the moon began to move, until it stopped covering the sun's surface at 3:33 pm - the 'fourth connection'. "A partial solar eclipse was seen in Arab and European countries as well," said Al-Sadoun. The total time of the present complete solar eclipse was 4 minutes and 11 seconds and took place in Libya. "The longest complete solar eclipse lasted for seven minutes and eight seconds, and it happened in 1955 in the Philippines. The longest expected possible eclipse is seven minutes and 30 seconds, but it hasn't been registered until now," Al-Sadoun pointed out. Some people think that the total solar eclipse can affect people. "The solar eclipse is only the passing of the moon's shadow by the sun. This shadow decreases the hot temperature on the area where it passes. This causes temperature differences between the areas where the eclipse passes and the rest of the areas. This may also cause a little wind, besides this, nothing else can happened," he noted. In 2010, Kuwait will witness a partial solar eclipse of 40 per cent, similar to this year's eclipse. In 2034, a total solar eclipse will be seen in Kuwait. "It was so good, it gave me goose pimples," said Julio Paredes, a pizzeria manager from Madrid who travelled to Side, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, to watch the phenomenon. "It was marvellous, unbelievable," agreed Thomas Reichert, from Stuttgart, southwest Germany. "I was fantastically lucky to be here." For many observers, it was a sign of divine might. For Ramatoutou, a farmer in the Niger village of Karey Gourou, it was a bad omen. "What a disaster, the sun has disappeared!" he exclaimed. "I hope God will protect us." The fourth total eclipse of the 21st century began soon after dawn over the far northeastern Brazilian city of Natal when, at 5:49 am (0849 GMT), the sun disappeared for 10 minutes and it was night again. Moving at dizzying speed, the lunar shadow reached Ghana at 0910 GMT, where sirens sounded as the capital Accra plunged into darkness for two and a half minutes. "I'm so emotional. And I'm also happy because now I'll be able to say to my grandchildren: 'I was there'," said Sylvia Boateng, 35, in Accra. Countries lying directly under the path, thus able to see a total eclipse, were Brazil, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Libya, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Observers 2,500 km either side saw a partial eclipse, with a fifth of the sun obscured in Britain but up to 80 per cent in the southern Gulf. The phenomenon was welcomed by whirling dervishes in Turkey's central city of Konya, a key religious centre. In Iraq's southern port city of Basra, the faithful went to mosques for a special prayer, called Salat Al-Qusuf. Eclipses are revered in Islam as proof of God's control over the moon and sun. Mosques in Niger's Maradi region were packed with people reading the Holy Quran and praying. "The eclipse only happens when God is angry with us and wants to prove his might," one Muslim scholar said on local radio. Libya, until recently an international pariah, relaxed entry rules to allow in at least 7,000 observers from 47 different countries, and granted special permission for telescopes. The only part of the European Union to lie on the path of totality was the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo, a few kilometres from Turkey. Some 3,000 people - an unprecedented influx onto the island, where hotel rooms had been booked up to three years in advance - watched it there, while cameras relayed the images to a giant screen in central Athens. Applause broke out as the screen showed the total eclipse at 1453 GMT. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his wife - wearing special glasses to filter out the ultraviolet light - and several thousand tourists converged at Al-Salloum, near the border with Libya. Eclipses should never be viewed without good optical filters as ultraviolet light, which is invisible to the human eye, can burn the retina even when the sun is covered. Some observers took makeshift precautions, watching the event reflected on windows or in buckets of water, or staring through the tiny hole in computer disks. Meanwhile in northern Turkey, hundreds of people camped out in tents after an academic claimed the eclipse would be followed by a severe earthquake with an epicentre near the town of Niksar. An eclipse in Turkey in August 1999 was followed by the first of two quakes that hit the industrial northwest, killing more than 20,000 people. "We will continue to live in tents for two more months after the eclipse," said Mustafa Hasta, a village elder sharing a tent with six relatives. By the time the eclipse ended, only a few dozen people were still watching on the main square of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The next eclipse will be on August 1, 2008 and will stretch across parts of North America, Europe and Asia. |