Romfilatelia will introduce into circulation a new postage stamps issue with the subject of astronomical phenomena. Under the title Astronomy. Events, the issue, consisting of two postage stamps and 1 First Day Cover, will be available to the general public and collectors on Monday, April 8th, this year.
This year marks 25 years since the Great European Eclipse, with the central point of the band of totality in Romania, near the town of Râmnicu Vâlcea, on August 11th, 1999. A total solar eclipse is not as rare as it is thought. The condition is to travel where it is produced.
Somewhere around the globe, we see a total solar eclipse every one year and four months! From 1999 to 2023, there were 18 total eclipses, three of which were hybrids, that is, there were annular eclipses on one side of the band, and total eclipses on the other. If we were to wait for a total eclipse of the Sun at a fixed point on the planet, say in the centre of Bucharest, on average, we would witness an eclipse once every 375 years! However, Bucharest was the place where two such phenomena occurred in the 20th century. In this part of the country, the luckiest of us saw an eclipse in February 1961 and a second one in August 1999. But the last one seen from here, before the two, was in the year 1100, when Bucharest did not exist. The next one, visible from the capital of Romania, or more precisely from the southern suburbs of Bucharest, will occur in September 2081.
The 19th eclipse since the one in Romania will be visible only from the North American continent; it will have as maximum duration the double of that of 1999, i.e. 4 minutes and 28 seconds, compared to 2 minutes 23 seconds, the maximum of that of 1999. This eclipse will occur on April 8th, 2024, and will be the most promoted astronomical phenomenon of all time, with an audience that will surpass that of the 1969 American astronauts’ moon landing.
A total solar eclipse occurs when there is a perfect alignment of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, in that order, with the Moon between the Earth and the Sun. In fact, the Moon, in its orbital movement, enters in front of the Sun, obscuring it and allowing to be seen, for a few minutes, what is invisible on ordinary days, namely the solar corona and the phenomena of the Sun’s chromosphere. This phenomenon has been particularly important in the history of science, physics, chemistry and astronomy in particular, and now, in the age of the Internet and air travel across the planet, it has become one of the most coveted places for scientific expeditions and exotic excursions.
Romfilatelia thanks the photographers Cătălin Beldea, Alson Wong and Cătălin Fus for their documentary support granted to the development of this issue of postage stamps.
