Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2020

29 MARCH-APRIL 2020 OUR EXPERIENCES A glimpse into the past and the present In 1999, an expedition to Turkish Kurdistan was planned to observe the total solar eclipse of August 11. The observation from Basnik, near Diyarbakir, was a great success, and the trip was an unforgettable ex- perience. Other members went to Paris, but they were unlucky, as the rain prevented them from admiring the spectacle. In 2005, the region of La Safor was touched by an annular eclipse, with Gandía in the centrality of the event during the October 3 rd pa- tronal feast of San Francisco de Borja. To better enjoy the phenom- enon, an exhibition with large posters was prepared, presented in the Municipal Library and at the Hotel Bayrén, where we received over 200 amateur astronomers from various groups, along with their ob- servational instruments. Even ama- teur astronomers from Italy, Bel- gium and France attended. The fact of organizing, spreading and finally carrying out the obser- vation gave us the definitive stimu- S undial of Beniganim, also this by Joan Olivares, which has the “particularity” of projecting the shadow in a circle, and the hour is illuminated above the metal support. V isit to one of the Sundials by Joan Olivares, located in Salem, a town in the Albaida Valley region, near Safor. It is a multignomon clock, since each edge corresponds to a shadow cast on a face and changes as the day pro- gresses. In addition, it has a sign (imperceptible in the photo), which indicates where the shadow runs on the day of San Miguel, patron of the town. lus to aspire to more relevant activ- ities for the future. It is interesting to note that on the beach, where several telescopes had been in- stalled, the influx was considerable, with more than 1000 people pres- ent at some times. We had just recovered from the eclipse when our member Josep Juliá, who had already discovered two asteroids, announced the dis- covery of a third, which was the first to receive the initials “VI” (Vir- tual Impactor) as one of the most “grazing” of the Earth, passing up to a third of the Earth-Moon dis- tance − about 120,000 km. In March 2006, just six months after the annular eclipse, a new trip was organized to Turkey to observe a total eclipse. In this new journey, 90 participants filled two buses. In 2008, we participated, together with other organizations, at the Se- mana de la Ciencia y el Cambio Cli- mático (SECICA), which had its first