By: Lia Contesso
Submitted: 2010-11-02 04:59:57 | Word Count: 569
Nowadays the optical instruments, from telescopes to filters, allow us to admire eclipses, and the astronomy studies reassure us on the fact that there’s nothing to be afraid of in an eclipse: it’s a phenomenon explainable with logic and science with nothing supernatural.
The astronomy lovers are equipped with instruments which allow them to observe stars and planets: they have tripods like photographers, but stargazers look at the firmament, in its everyday life and in the special days, signed by particular movements which stand out on the astronomic maps, for scientists, and on the horoscopes for those who read their fate in the stars.
Hence, prepare your telescope and get ready for the next eclipse: next moon eclipse will be on the 15th June 2011, and will be total in Italy, while the next solar eclipse will be partial in Italy, on the 4th January 2011.
The first rule you have to respect when looking at an eclipse is not looking at it with no protection: even though the sun is hidden, it’s still the sun! Looking at it with no protection may cause problems to your sight, thus it is necessary to use filters.
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Eclipses are an alignment of stars: to be total it must be a perfect alignment, which is rare. The alignment of the planets is object of the astrologic studies, which intent is that of guess the people’s fate studying the movements of the stars, connected to each one of us since our birth – or, at least, that’s what they say.
The sun and the moon were adored by the ancient populations as they still had no explanation for their light, but they already guessed their fundamental importance for life. The god of sun existed in the culture of ancient Egypt, as well as in the ancient Greece and Rome: summing up, a divinity comprehensibly recurrent.
Nowadays, though we do not adore it as a divinity, we know that the sun is life, though we have decidedly more scientific explanations than the ancient populations, which make us understand how it works. As far as the moon is concerned, it was adored as well, and its adoration is told in history and reflected in music: the famous aria by Bellini, Casta Diva, in his Norma, is a prayer which the priestess addresses to the moon, asking to spread on earth the peace it make reign in the sky (“spargi in terra quella pace che regnare fai nel ciel”). This aria from Norma is famous enough to have been represented for years on the back of the 5000 Liras notes, dedicated to the composer from Catania.
The movements of the stars have always been object of studies and curiosity, lived day by day and transposed in music. Eclipses, then, are particular moments which near the less interested people to the observation of the stars, being the eclipse a rare and fascinating phenomenon.
Either you are an astronomy or astrology lover, or a simple curious, the sky is anyway an unmissable show, which goes on stage every night making us stay with our nose towards the sky to look at something that, though at the centre of the scientists’ studies, will always keep alive the intriguing and fascinating concepts of infinity and unknown.
Author Resource:- This article was written by Lia Contesso, with support from fotocamere digitali.
