For Global Astronomy Month 2020 (128): Inertia (1)

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

Published: Monday, June 22 2020 22:40

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In 1993-1997, an enthusiastic amateur astronomer, Danut Ionescu, realized a weekly astronomical radio broadcast, “Contact Astronomic - Radio Contact”. 

Then he emigrated from Romania to the southern hemisphere and established in New Zealand, continuing to be active in amateur astronomy. 

Today I see that the center of the pandemic moves to the southern hemisphere, too, but in Latin America, while in the northern hemisphere things evolves contradictorily: various measures of relaxation and opening, increasing the number of patients, many more masks, much frustration, tendencies of dictatorship, violence and anarchy, aberrant political disputes, signs of economical crisis on one hand, better treatments and ways of defense, impressive rescue aids, sublime examples of human generosity, solidarity and fantasy on the other hand.  But one after another, I think the best thing is that the people learn to live together with the damned virus until their intense wish of life will defeat the invisible monster. In this respect, the “astronomical contacts” could bring more hope and also could help us for a resolute, disciplined and optimistic attitude.

Returning to Danut Ionescu, he was the man who (after the “night of the communist dictatorship” in which amateur astronomy was almost forbidden in Romania) introduced me to the new-created Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy (SARM) in the 1990s and, together, we played my first astropoetry drama, “Suffering in the Universe because of the Meteors”, right at “Contact Astronomic - Radio Contact” in 1995.

Remembering the title of his radio broadcast, a symbol evening for me was on June 8, 2020, when I looked at length for a good position to catch the star Vega (which will dominate the urban sky for the next months) in a Bucharestian park.  

And when I found it, I took tens of pictures from which I selected three just because Vega was apparently surrounded by leaves of different colors due to a special artificial illumination.

I already used one of them in a previous episode, now I’ll use the second one and I leave the third one for a future episode.

Thus we start a new series in our crisis project as the inertia of the attitude with which Global Astronomy Month 2020 inspired us.

We also hope that the same inertia will continue to enliven us several times throughout the entire pandemic year.   

The great star Vega
astronomical contact
form of resistance
-Andrei Dorian Gheorghe-