Pauls Images of the eclipse
Arrived in Turkey, Monday 9th August after an overnight flight. That day I looked into rail travel & drew a blank so I ordered a jeep for first thing the following day. First thing next day the jeep had turned into a car & in the end I had to take the car & set off for Diyarbakir (north of the Syrian border) some 1000Km (600 miles) away.
The first 100Km went well but then came a treacherous winding narrow road which was cut into the coastal inlet cliffs. There appeared to be no end to this road but was fooled a few times when I passed through towns & the road improved. Even with a 200' drop into the Mediterranean I started to fall asleep. After travelling on this road for some 150Km it finally came to a end at Mersin, much to my relief. Having lost a great deal of time on the coastal road I decided to change my plans and stop overnight at a place called Gaziantep instead of Diyarbakir. About an hour before reaching Gaziantep I drove through a tremendous thunder storm which made me wonder about the next day. On arriving at Gaziantep I searched the city centre for an hotel without success, I then decided to try the airport only to defeat their security system by taking a wrong turn. After having a sign language discussion with a policeman I found myself a 4* hotel. The next day I set off for Diyarbakir & then a further 30Km east. I finally arrived with a hour or so to spare & any worries about the weather were dispelled with an almost cloudless sky.
The equipment that I had brought along was a SLR camera, a 500mm lens, a x2 converter, a varimagni finder (x1 & x2), a Thousand Oaks solar filter, 100ASA film, tripod & a video camera. The SLR served two purposes, one obviously for photography (1000mm effective), the other for viewing the eclipse (2000mm effective). The video camera was for viewing the change in light levels, shortly before totality, during & shortly after totality. This was backed up with much practice of obtaining the suns image in the SLR viewfinder, not so easy with the magnification & the solar filter.
During the eclipse I was visited by many adults & children, some had been just using a few layers of photographic film for a filter, much to my relief the practice ceased with the viewing of the enlarged image through the camera.
To the eclipse itself, taking a very fleeting (not recommended) view of the sun with the naked eye it didn't become apparent that the eclipse had begun until it was almost half covered. When the sun had become a thin crescent the colour of the light changed to a white light, similar to that of a full Moon but much brighter. I have never heard of this being mentioned before & came as a surprise. I was also amazed by how much light was available in the final moments before totality & it wasn't until the diamond ring phase that the light level changed a great deal. At totality another surprise was that I found the corona still to bright to look at with the naked eye, the actual light level wasn't completely dark which was not what I expected & the best way to describe it was approaching dusk when the sky is still bright. Through the camera with the filter now removed the corona was not visible but Bailys Beads were a tremendous sight & brought a lot of pleasure to everybody that viewed them. Unfortunately they did not show up in the photographs that I took but were replaced by the corona. I also missed out on photographing the diamond ring, on the first chance I still had the solar filter on & the second time I was retrieving the solar filter from the car at the time. Shortly after totality the white light was not noticed as it had been beforehand. The video camera had picked up traffic switching their head lamps on & the road being illuminated, the colour of the horizon turning red, isolated cloud that had been white in appearance before being silhouetted & flocks of birds flying around at totality. My thoughts now are for June 2004, not a total eclipse but the transition of Venus.
Pauls Images of the eclipse
Maintained by Michael Oates