Totality 2006:
Return to Turkey
Less than 7 years since we last came to Turkey to witness a total
solar eclipse, the country was privileged enough to receive another
visit from the Moon's shadow path on 29 March 2006. Unlike in 1999,
when the shadow crossed from northwest to southeast, this time the
shadow would approach from Libya and Egypt, cross the Mediterranean,
then sweep across to the Black Sea. Indeed, the two eclipse paths would
cross not far from the charming town of
Tokat, where we had a fabulous
view of the 11 August 1999 event.
Thus, one option would be to retrace our steps from that expedition,
and see if we could experience an eclipse twice from the same place. As
much as we enjoyed our home-stays in Tokat, the large amount of driving
undertaken on that trip, coupled with the much cooler season and
diminished weather prospects for that location, led us to plan a
different itinerary, while still taking in many of the highlights of
the 1999 trip. While the chances of clear skies were rated as high as
60% in the Libyan desert, southern Turkey was still rated as 50:50, and
as fascinating and unknown as Libya may be, we all agreed that Turkey
was still our favourite destination. For over 18 months, our seasoned
trip organiser Dave Moser had been in regular contact with our tour
guide from 1999, Meltem Ciftci Kurgan, to put together a tour of the
Mediterranean and Aegean coastal region. A group of 28 was assembled,
mostly from the US, but with a few from Australia, Switzerland, and
Italy. Having racked up 11 eclipse trips previously, my long-time
travelling companion Mervyn Thomas decided to hang up his spurs. My new
room-mate was also my fiancée (now wife), the lovely Marilena
Salvo. Marilena is a bit of an eclipse veteran herself, having seen the
1999 event from Germany, and the 2002 event from Ceduna in Australia.
This would be my 7th eclipse trip, but the question was would Dave
extend his perfect record of 5 eclipses from 5 trips?
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, comments,
or experiences of your own to share about the 2006 eclipse. My e-mail
address is "sdr", followed by "@aao.gov.au" (sorry, that's
a kludge to confuse those Web-crawlers that trawl the WWW for addresses
to add to junk-mail lists).
This trip also marked the first time I left my trusty SLR and slide
film at home, and relied solely on digital images from my Canon IXUS II
3.2 megapixel camera. Although there would be times when I missed
either a telephoto or wide-angle lens, this beaut little camera also
gave me the opportunity to shoot short segments of low-res video. Much
as I loathe video cameras, sometimes they're the only way
to capture the scale, sound, and action of a scene. To speed up
downloading, I have shrunk the images by a factor of 2,
and broken the trip up into sections. If you wish to see the full-size
version of any picture, just click on it.
Other accounts of the 2006 March 29 total solar eclipse:
Return to Stuart's home page.
Return to Stuart's eclipse page.
Last modified: December 20, 2006.
Stuart Ryder