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I first heard of the Total Solar Eclipse on August 11th 1999 from a book in the school library when I was about eight or nine years old. "Wow!" I thought, "1999 - that's so long into the future. I'll be nearly 34 years old. I wonder what I'll be like then. That was 25 years ago, and I already knew that I would go to see it.
So you can imagine my worries, when, having driven with two friends across Europe to Romania (mainly following the path of totality), and having climbed an 8000 foot mountain to get a good view of the approaching shadow, we had been sitting, just below the summit of Cerja, in thick mist now for over one and a half hours! There was now only fifteen minutes to go to totality at exactly 2pm, Romanian time. All efforts to find a way out of the mist had failed. It was coming up out of the valleys. There was nowhere to go. We had committed ourselves that morning at 6am when we had decided not to pack up our tents and go down the chairlift again. Surely that cloud in the distance won't come over this way. Now, not only was I not going to see the eclipse, I wondered whether I'd even notice it getting dark - it wasn't that light in the mist already. Even if it cleared we knew it had been fairly overcast above when it formed. That second cloud bank had come in an hour ago and quickly covered the earlier clear blue sky of 10-11:30am. It was all a far cry from my practising in the garden at home in Oxford in the midday sun when I'd decided to go out and buy a sweatband to stop my eyes getting all salty. I'd even had to lend some of my thick mountaineering clothes to some local lads from the town way below who'd come up in the early morning sunshine in only T-shirts and shorts and now sat shivering in the cold mist. I was having to wipe drops of condensation of the face of my mylar camera filters.
We decided to pack up - it was hopeless. I'd even closed up one tripod, when there was a cheer from the group on the nearby summit. A glimpse of the sun! So far, we'd had five seconds just after first contact and about twenty seconds twenty minutes later. I quickly put the video camera back on the tripod, aimed, focussed, checked the image - yes, there it was..., er,...oh,.... gone - again.
Two minutes to go. A shout from above - "Look at your shadow!" - the sun was feebly shining through the rapidly thinning mist. "We might just see something here", said Peter optimistically. "Hmm, I thought, "but not much." Suddenly the mist began to move, faster now. It was descending! Within seconds we could see the sun in clear blue sky above, and with only a minute to go the mist was all but gone. We were bathed in an eerie purplish light, strong enough to cast shadows but obviously weak. This was it - we were going to see it after all! Cheers and whoops of delight rose from the mountain top into the now clear blue sky above. I quickly checked the aim of the video and my SLR. They were still OK. 15 seconds to go.
"Take it off. Take it off now", advised Peter. I removed the filters and looked up. The sun hung in a large circle of blue, with patchy cloud away in the distance. Suddenly it began to get dark very quickly. I dared to look at the sun to see the silhouette of the Moon suddenly appear to the right of the rapidly fading sunlight. A beautiful diamond ring was suspended above us, its gleam rapidly fading as the sky turned a wonderful shade of deep violet. I snapped a couple of shots at 1/1000th and 1/500th second. Then it was gone, and the corona came into view. "Wow! Look at the structure!" I cried. There was so much intricate structure in the pure white corona which was almost a solar diameter out from the edge of the moon - I had never expected it to look so complex. And all around the moon's disk were pale pink prominences dancing and moving. It seems that the whole rim of the moon was on fire. I quickly checked the video camera's exposure and aim, and then took some photographs with my SLR. I'd decided I 'd take one exposure at each setting from 1/250th to 1/2 second, giving the camera a second or two to stop shaking in between. I dared to looked around - a golden twilight lay all around the horizon in all directions, and there below and to the left of the sun in the purple sky, was Venus, shining brightly. I quickly searched for Mercury and any stars, but I couldn't see them and I wanted to spend as much time as I could watching the sun which had been transformed into this beautiful spectacle. I picked up my binoculars are stared in wonder at this amazing sight I knew was already half way through. I wanted it to last longer, but knew that at any minute it would end. Slowly the right limb of the moon began to brighten and then there it was again - the beautiful diamond ring. It seemed to last longer this time, and for several seconds afterwards, even though the sun was almost too bright to look at, you could still see the silhouette of the moon off to the left, slowly fading into the glare of the sunlight. It was over.
For a while we were all lost for words. It had simply been the most amazing visual experience ever. Then we all started babbling incessantly about magnetic field lines and prominences as if we were experts after our two minutes, 22 seconds of experience. It was only afterwards, that we realised just how lucky we had been to see this eclipse. Millions of other people's plans had been thwarted by cloud and even rain. Even the people on the next summit along the ridge from us had missed it. By some strange quirk of mountain weather systems, their patch of mist hadn't cleared until it was all over. There were some long faces trudging back past us on their way down.
But it stayed clear for the rest of the day - beautiful clear blue skies. We had a great view of the rest of the partial phases as the afternoon wore on.
But nothing compared to totality. I will say to you now, if you ever get the chance to see a Total Solar Eclipse then do. You will remember those few short minutes for a long, long time afterwards.
Andrew Ramsey
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