From Brazil to Mongolia


Solar Eclipse Greeted With Cheers Across Southern Mediterranean

March 29 (Bloomberg) -- People cheered across the small Greek island of Kastellorizo and Egyptians danced in the Sahara desert as skies across the southern Mediterranean darkened for a few minutes with the first solar eclipse of the year.

Europe's best view of the eclipse was from Kastellorizo, 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) off Turkey's southern coast. Hellas Sat, Greece's sole satellite operator, broadcast live from Kastellorizo to video screens in Athens's main Syntagma Square.

Street lamps were turned on across the island when the sun was totally eclipsed, and cheers and applause were heard when the sunlight returned. In Athens, the capital, locals and tourists gathered around the giant screens and donned special dark glasses to view the event. The next total eclipse visible from Greece will take place in 2088.
Egyptians, whose ancestors worshipped the sun for thousands of years, danced when the eclipse ended and the star's full glow returned. Tourists who gathered to watch the event joined the dancing in the desert location, at a camp outside the border post of Salloum, near Libya.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak donned the special glasses along with hundreds of other people near Salloum. State television aired pictures from the area, where the eclipse was total. The sun was partially eclipsed in Cairo.
In the Turkish resort of Antalya, thousands of Turks and tourists waited along the Mediterranean coast to view the full eclipse at 1:56 p.m. local time, according to pictures from NTV television. Hundreds of people in the northern town of Tokat camped outside over fears the eclipse would be followed by an earthquake, as was the case in 1999, Agence France-Presse said.

The eclipse was visible along a narrow corridor that spanned half the Earth's surface, beginning in Brazil and then crossing the Atlantic Ocean, North Africa, Russia and Central Asia, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on its Web site. The last of the eclipse would be seen in Mongolia.
Solar eclipses occur at the new moon, when that body passes between the Earth and the sun. The moon can eclipse the sun in three ways: a partial eclipse, when part of the Earth's satellite passes in front of the sun; an annular eclipse, when the moon is centered across the sun and leaves only a bright ring; and a total eclipse, in which the sun is blacked out by the moon.

The next such event will be an annular eclipse on Sept. 22, and will be best viewed from Guyana and the South Atlantic Ocean, Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation said on its Web site.
Hotel rooms on Kastellorizo were full and authorities increased the number of flights and ferries connecting the island with neighboring Rhodes, the Kathimerini newspaper said today.

Five of Greece's leading research institutions conducted an experiment to monitor the changes in the atmosphere in Athens, where the sun was 87 percent eclipsed at 1:48 p.m. local time.
The total eclipse occurred over Kastellorizo at 1:53:27 p.m. and lasted for 2.5 minutes.
The earliest record of a solar eclipse was in 2134 BC in China, with Greeks first recording such an event in 762 BC. The ancient Greek writer Herodotus wrote that a war between the Medeans and Lydians in 585 BC was ended when the armies were terrified by an eclipse.

Greece's state-run NET television, which broadcast the event live from early in the day, invited viewers back in 82 years to see the region's next total eclipse.

To contact the reporters on this story:
George Hatzidakis in Athens at ghatzidakis@bloomberg.net;
Maher Chmaytelli in Cairo at mchmaytelli@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: March 29, 2006 07:23 EST














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