For Global Astronomy Month 2020 (113): Echo (7) - GAM Time Tunnel (6)

By Andrei Dorian Gheorghe (text) and Florin Alexandru Stancu (design)

Published: Monday, June 01 2020 17:42

• Previous
• Next

“I have always been amazed at the attention with which the architects of the past approached the details of the facades… while we are now characterized by a focus on costs.”
-Dan Uza-

Although passionate about archaeoastronomy and astronomy history, Dan-George Uza is professionally an economist in Cluj-Napoca (unofficial Capital City of the Transylvania province, where the antique Geto-Dacians left as main astronomical legacy the fascinating sanctuary calendar in Sarmizegetusa, and later, during the multiculturalism of the Habsburg Empire, Gavril Todica and Ioan N. Corbu were remarkable popularizers of astronomy for the Romanian majority, grouped culturally in the ASTRA association, in Sibiu-Hermannstadt; in the 1990s, amateur astronomy lived a veritable rebirth in historical Transylvania after the obscurantist times of the communist regime - 1948-1989 - thanks especially to a few enthusiastic members or close collaborators of the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy-SARM, who created local astronomical groups: Gelu Claudiu Radu and Stefan Berinde - also talented astropoets - in Cluj-Napoca, Eugen Florin Marc in Targu Mures, Raul Truta in Bistrita, Lucian Curelaru in Brasov, Felician Ursache in Sfantu Gheorghe and others).

Dan Uza began as a co-founder of the Borealis Astroclub (created in 2008 by two members of SARM, Marian Niculescu and Cilian Andres, and a member of the Magyar Astronomical Society of Transylvania, Istvan Matis), who realized many activities of popularization of astronomy for the public at large (in a city that had a private observatory in the 18th century - during the imperial times - and has a professional observatory since the 1920s - made during the Romanian Kingdom; it is to note that here, before “Borealis”:  Romulus Irimes “dared” to make - with the support of Mircea Corpodean - a private observatory, the magazine “Astronomia” and an astronomical circle under the communist regime in the 1960s; Gelu Claudiu Radu created a SARM branch and edited the magazine “Noi si Cerul” / Us and the Sky in the 1990s, Horatiu Fluieras made the STARMAX store for telescopes and other astronomical products in 2005 - doubled by the Andromeda Astronomical Society in 2009 and the on-line magazine “Pagini Astronomice” / Astrnomical Pages).

“And what is the expression of the cosmic high for us humans?
Of course the answer must be the Sun!”
-Dan Uza-

He is also the best Romanian specialist in sundials - well-known for his book, ‘Sundials in Transylvania, Banat, Crisana and Maramures” (provinces that compose “Great Transylvania”) - and an astronomical tradition searcher (a field in which, in the 1900s, Ion Otescu published a book that included a list with 42 Romanian traditional constellations in the vision of the Romanian peasants from Wallachia and Moldova, and Victor Anestin published a chronicle of the astronomical observations on the territory of current Romania between the 15th century and the 19th century, enriching the world astronomy heritage).  

In 2016 Dan Uza became a co-founder of the Romanian Society for Cultural Astronomy, and during GAM 2020, my time tunnel remarked that he made home astronomy and published on-line a few old Romanian traditional materials from his collection (the Romanian old names of the planets, zodiacal constellations and lunar phases in Transylvania from a calendar published in 1826 - they look a little influenced by verbal regionalisms, but two of them are quite different: “Capriorul”/the Roebuck for Capricornus and “Cracitul”/the Bow-Legged for Cancer -, and a few other Romanian and Magyar calendars for April). 

Mysterious sundials
And precise calendars -
Wonderful human actions
Starting from the stars.
-Andrei Dorian Gheorghe-