For Global Astronomy Month 2020 (92) - Homage for Female Astronomers

By Andrei Dorian Gheorghe (text) and Valentin Grigore

Published: Wednesday, May 13 2020 22:11

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“I lost a dear, honest and modest friend; Mariana Tulbure and I lived our most beautiful observational nights at the SARM Perseid Event - the Perseid nights… “
Erika Lucia Suhay (president of the Romanian Association of Education through Astronomy)

Mariana Tulbure (January 14, 1948 - May 5, 2020) was the teacher of astronomy at the National Children’s Palace in Bucharest, gave astronomical education to many students, was one of the three great ladies in Romanian public astronomy in the 1990s (together with teacher Erika Lucia Suhay and Dr. Magda Stavinschi - director of the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy), and is our subjective example for this theme. 

She used to participate with her best students at the Perseid Event of the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy (SARM) during its golden age (1993-1999), on the Voivodes Hill and in the town of Targoviste. 

It was an event with special programs (national astronomy colloquiums, astronomy summer schools, observations of the sky, cosmopoetry festivals, international showrooms of astronomical arts, photos and publications, youth contests of astronomy and astropoetry, expeditions for the study of the Perseid meteor shower) that attracted important professional astronomers and the best amateur astronomers, astrophotographers, astropoets and astroartists in Romania, which culminated with a large international edition, EuRoEclipse Perseids 1999, organized around a total solar eclipse.

Our tribute to Mariana Tulbure (4 haiku poems and photos 2 and 3 by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe, design and photos 1 and 4 by Valentin Grigore), which is also homage for all female astronomers, begins on the Princely Way in Targoviste (the usual road to the Voivodes Hill), continues near the National Children’s Palace in Bucharest and ends in the sky.

Finally, one of the best students of Mariana Tulbure, Sandu Val Cosmic, became part of this tribute through a very interesting picture (containing a fireball, the planet Jupiter and a lightning), which he took during SARM Perseid Event 1997 and was included in the first SARM cosmopoetry (astro-photo-art-poetry) exhibition at a world astronomy event (International Meteor Conference 1997, Petnica, Serbia).