Catalin Beldea

Stratospheric Flight into Totality – Australia 2012

Abstract

In 2011 I managed to make a project which was called “Stratospherium 1” and together with my team we were able to film and photograph some landmarks of our country from stratosphere - a first time in Romania - and publish the results in the Romanian press. That success made me think about the next project on a next level: observing/photographing a total solar eclipse from stratosphere, by flying a nacelle into the Moon’s umbral cone. 

As we later found out and as Sky and Telescope – the well-known american astronomy magazine stated, our photographs and movie from the eclipse cone were the first ones in history to document both the umbra of the Moon projected on the ground and the eclipsed Sun in the sky from the stratosphere, some 27 km above Earth, in the same picture. There were several attempts in 1999 and from NASA in 1963, but neither were able to obtain in the same frame both the eclipsed Sun and the projected umbra, from the stratosphere.

The presentation will contain:

- preparations for the flight 

- science behind a successful stratospheric flight into the umbral cone

- how we, a team of 6 (3 Romanians and 3 Australians) could end up in jail if the flight would not had worked as planned

- launch, track and recover of the space box together with all the equipment

- how we had influenced the future umbral stratospheric flights after 2012 totality

- the movie Eclipser 1 – 8 minutes movie from stratosphere.

Bio

“I am Catalin Beldea, I live in Bucharest, Romania, I am the owner and the presenter of “AstroShow” – a science show based on astronomy presentations and outreach for general public, I write the astronomy section for the oldest pop-science publication in Romania – “Stiinta&Tehnica” – I am an astrophotographer specialized on eclipses and of course I am an umbraphile (eclipse chaser) with 15 total solar eclipses seen on 6 continents."