IF YOU find yourself in a traffic jam on one of Europe鈥檚 highways in August, it won鈥檛 be because hordes of light-starved northerners are desperate for a little Mediterranean sunshine. This summer, the big attraction is rather different: millions of people will be travelling to see the Sun extinguished. On Wednesday, 11 August, the Moon鈥檚 shadow will race across Europe and Asia at 2500 kilometres per hour, in the last great celestial event of the millennium.
If you haven鈥檛 yet decided where to watch the total eclipse, hurry up. Staying at home is a mistake, unless you live in Plymouth, Munich, Bucharest or one of the other cities in the zone of totality. Outside this strip, just a hundred kilometres wide, the eclipse will only be partial. And although a 97 or 99 per cent eclipse, as will be experienced in London and Paris respectively, is an impressive sight, it鈥檚 nothing compared with the grandeur of totality.
But where should you go? It depends on what you want: a long eclipse, nice scenery, good weather or just a cheap trip.
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One thing you can be sure of: the eclipse will be bang on time (see Diagram). That鈥檚 a good reason to start travelling early. If you happen to live near the zone of totality, it might be tempting to jump in the car on Wednesday morning and drive there. But you won鈥檛 want to find yourself watching a partial eclipse from a traffic jam. Better to arrive at least a day before.
Traffic jams will almost certainly be a problem in Cornwall and south Devon, the only parts of mainland Britain that will see totality, at about 11.10 British Summer Time. The roads will be packed with a million or more eclipse chasers. However, it is not too late to find a place to stay: there is still accommodation left, according to the Cornwall Tourist Board.
Unfortunately, the weather prospects are poor, with less than a 50 per cent chance of seeing the eclipse (see Diagram). The same is true of northern France and the southernmost parts of Belgium and Luxembourg, but getting clouded out with a bottle of Chardonnay on a terrace in Compi猫gne would be more bearable than gulping cider on the dark and rain-lashed seafront of Torquay.FIG-mg21885201.jpg
Continental Europe also allows for last-minute decisions. If you plan to view the eclipse from Stuttgart in Germany, but the weather forecast is lousy, you can go to Munich instead. Indeed, the six-lane autobahn from Stuttgart to Munich lies entirely within the path of the Moon鈥檚 shadow, as does the house in Ulm where Albert Einstein was born 120 years ago.
Farther east, the average August weather is better, as is the scenery. The zone of totality will clip the northwestern tip of the Austrian Alps, graze the city of Graz and move on to engulf Lake Balaton in Hungary, the largest lake in Central Europe and a popular holiday resort, where the summer mosquitoes may be more of a nuisance to eclipse watchers than clouds.
The eclipse will be total for a small part of northern Yugoslavia, but tourists there are unlikely to be welcomed. The faint-hearted may also be put off neighbouring Hungary and Romania.
But Romania does offer the longest eclipse. Being halfway along the eclipse track, where the Earth鈥檚 surface is closer to the Moon, Romania slices through a thicker part of the Moon鈥檚 conical shadow. In R卯mnicu V卯lcea, 150 kilometres northwest of Bucharest, totality reaches its maximum duration of 2 minutes and 23 seconds, 22 seconds longer than in Cornwall.
After passing over the eastern borders of Romania and Bulgaria, the lunar shadow will cross the Black Sea in the early afternoon, where the only traffic to worry about will be luxury cruise liners. It then moves diagonally through eastern Turkey, crossing Sivas and Diyarbakir and a town called Batman.
Apart from northern Iraq and central Iran, where the weather is even more favourable, Turkey offers the best eclipse-viewing prospects-if you aren鈥檛 put off by the Kurdish PKK movement鈥檚 recent warning to tourists not to visit the country. The mean cloud cover in Diyarbakir is just 20 per cent, and totality still lasts well over two minutes. And if you fall in love with Turkish coffee and baklava, you could always stay in Sivas until the town鈥檚 next total solar eclipse, on 29 March 2006.
Finally, after crossing Iran via the town of Esfahan, the Moon鈥檚 shadow brushes over Karachi in Pakistan and passes south of Ahmadabad in India, before leaving the Earth鈥檚 surface just east of the Indian subcontinent. But near this eastern end of the eclipse track, the monsoon means that the sky will almost certainly be cloudy.
Western Europe will have to wait until 2081 for another total solar eclipse. In the meantime, you could always visit Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique or Madagascar to see the first eclipse of the third millennium on 21 June 2001.
The right hand of darkness
WHEN was the first total solar eclipse recorded in England? It might seem a trivial question, but in fact the timing of that eclipse sealed the fate of faiths and nations, and determined the calendar now used by the whole Western world.
It is a tale of two churches. The Celtic Church originated in Ireland, and went on to establish itself in Scotland and in the monasteries of Iona and Lindisfarne. Its influence was spreading south. Meanwhile, the Roman Church had been moving northwards ever since Saint Augustine was sent from Rome in 597 to found the first cathedral in Canterbury and convert the locals from paganism.
The inevitable clash came in the 7th century, in Northumbria. King Oswiu of Northumbria had established several new monasteries under the Celtic Church, but his consort, Queen Eanfleda, was a Kentish lady who belonged to the Roman Church. Their problem was in scheduling holidays: the Celtic Church determined the date of Easter according to an 84-year cycle brought by early Cretan missionaries, whereas the Roman Easter was fixed by the tables of Dionysius Exiguus, employing the 19-year metonic cycle (the near-coincidence between 19 solar years and 235 lunar months), so their Easter dates often differed.
Eanfleda might be fasting on her Palm Sunday while Oswiu was feasting on his Easter Day.
This inconvenience is often given as the reason that Oswiu convened the Synod of Whitby in 664, at which representatives of the two churches debated, competing for Oswiu鈥檚 allegiance. Rome won, and that eventually led to the unification of the fiefdoms of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes to form the English nation.
But we now know that there is more to the story. Two other great events occurred in England in 664. One was an outbreak of the bubonic plague; the other was a total solar eclipse on 1 May.
Monastic records are vague about the eclipse鈥檚 location, and only recently has it been possible to work out exactly where it appeared. The Earth鈥檚 rotation rate is slowing because of tidal drag by the Moon, and the rate at which it slows varies, so calculating the planet鈥檚 orientation at a particular moment thirteen hundred years ago is difficult.
But Richard Stephenson of the University of Durham has succeeded in doing that by analysing a set of ancient eclipse observations (鈥淚n the shadow of the Moon鈥�, 快猫短视频, 30 January, p 30). In 664, the zone of totality passed over northern Ireland, southern Scotland and northern England. It would have darkened all of Oswiu鈥檚 monasteries.
According to Daniel McCarthy and Aidan Breen of Trinity College, Dublin, the eclipse must have been a divine sign to Oswiu that he had erred in following the Celtic Church. The pestilence thereafter would surely have convinced him. He called the synod in an atmosphere of terror, the outcome a foregone conclusion.
More evidence for the eclipse link appears in a letter from the Pope, noting how Oswiu was converted to 鈥渢he true faith鈥� by the 鈥渟hielding right hand of God鈥�.
Oswiu鈥檚 conversion is the reason for the impending millennium, as well as for the existence of England. Several different Christian calendars were used in Oswiu鈥檚 time, but our particular year numbering derives from the Dionysiac Easter tables adopted by the Venerable Bede in the early 8th century. Bede鈥檚 mentors had been advocates of the Roman case at the synod. If the Celts had won instead, we might now be living in the year 2004, or 2037, or even 1967.
Duncan Steel is an astronomer and science writer currently working at Armagh Observatory. His book Eclipse is published by Headline, London (拢16.99)