How I remember the solar eclipse in Greece in 1999, when we used lighters to tint glasses when we weren't supposed to.

In the summer of 1999, as in every millennium that ends, messianists and conspiracy theorists had a party, not only on the Internet because it was then still in its infancy, but also in the media, which had the lion's share at the time. Information.

Added to all this is the solar eclipse that we will see from our country in August. Theories about the end of the world, either from some cosmic catastrophe resulting from an eclipse, or from the 2000 virus, have given and taken. Augustus found me in our village on western Lesbos, Antissa. We had no internet, no cell phones, the TV picked up Turkish channels better than Greek channels (for propaganda reasons some said), the more I understood, a (even) partial eclipse of the sun, was the most interesting thing that could happen to a break a bit like Ruston Classic Greek summer, for an introverted 17-year-old.

The media warned of the dangers of the eclipse, which will cover 63 to 93% of the sun in Greece, and suggested solutions. We read in News Jul 99:

In all texts published in scientific journals around the world there is always a note “Do not view the eclipse with the naked eye.”

the Eugenides Planetarium He previously issued a statement in which he stressed that under no circumstances should one look at the sun through a telescope or binoculars, and that it is better to see the projection of the image of the sun and not the eclipse directly.

The first danger is that the cornea of ​​the human eye is damaged by infrared and ultraviolet rays emitted by the sun. Mr. Anastasios Dabergolas, an astronomer at the National Observatory in Athens, explains: “At the time the eclipse will begin, around 12 noon, the sun will be at its highest point in the sky.”

“This means that dangerous solar radiation does not have enough time to weaken before it reaches the Earth. The sun's rays encounter the smallest possible thickness of the atmosphere, that is, they pass through the smallest possible number of layers of the atmosphere in that time,” emphasizes Mr. D'Abergola.

Special filters

In order to safely observe the eclipse phenomenon, special filters are required that neutralize dangerous solar radiation. “Under no circumstances should we use sunglasses or tinted glass. With glasses, we do not look directly at the sun, they simply help absorb the radiation that we receive indirectly, from reflected sunlight,” says Mr. D'Abergola.

Meanwhile, Mr. D'Apergola mentions a number of easy ways to observe the eclipse safely. “Besides the special filters used, there are also some simple ways to observe this phenomenon. If we take a large cardboard and make a hole in the middle with a diameter of about 2 mm, we can observe the eclipse. We do not look directly through the hole, but turn the cardboard towards the sun and watch The shadow of the eclipse on Earth.

I woke up on the day of the eclipse and decided to get ready to watch it. The idea of ​​a cardboard with a hole was not particularly attractive to me. There were special glasses, but they were not sold in the village. I was seven years old, and I would find another way to face the sun. My mother told me that on another eclipse, the teachers had asked them to take a piece of glass and turn it completely black with a candle, through which they could see the eclipse, but she also told me that he wasn't suggesting we should do it with cardboard because “we don't have any more.” (Warning do not try this with stained glass in case of an eclipse)

Of course I colored the bottom of the cigarette with the lighter and went into the forest to watch the eclipse in peace. So what do I remember? Firstly, even though it was midday in August, I felt the air slowly getting colder. Some scientists said that animals could behave strangely for a few minutes during the eclipse. I noticed that it was as if the entire forest had become silent. The cicadas and birds that happened a few minutes ago. As the sunlight gradually diminished, the whole scene became strange, and I thought that although the Babylonians had explained it thousands of years before and that in ancient times they could predict it, says Herodotus of Thales the Milesians who used in 585 B.C. The eclipse he said when we know that it will happen to stop the battle of the Lydians and Medes, it makes sense that people in the past believed that the end of the world was coming. What I liked most was that the light passing through the different leaves, on the ground, seemed to leave little crescents. I grabbed the glass, and when I realized that the eclipse phase (which was about 75% partial) had begun, I looked through the glasses and saw a few things. Then one day it was like before.. Our world wasn't destroyed, the flowers were singing again and luckily after 25 years, I still don't wear glasses.