I was shocked and amused to learn of this while watching the "Star" episode of a BBC documentary miniseries about the planets. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in astronomy, by the way, though the material is a bit dated now. I found it for download via a certain famous bittorrent tracker - just search for 'bbc the planets' or some such. Anyway, I've also happened upon a transcript of the episode: http://www.cornel1801.com/bbc/PLANETS/5-Star.html Here is the relevant portion: Douglas Gough is a leading solar scientist. To see his first total eclipse, he had travelled to Indonesia. "The Indonesian government had declared it to be illegal to watch the eclipse, at least for the Indonesians. They had either to watch it on TV or to go to the mosque and pray for the dragon to spit the sun out again. Which is what they believed was taking place." Isn't it wonderful what religion can do for cultures and laws? I expect this belief is a holdover from ancient times, when this sort of thinking would have been much more common. Even the bible is full of stuff about serpents and dragons, and while few seem to know it, this stuff is all likely astrologically derived. There are a number of serpentine constellations officially recognised to this day, and ancient stories were made up involving them. It is just amazing, and a bit scary, that even in this day and age there is a major world religion that still regards the solar eclipse as a serpent eating the sun, and that there is a government out there that actually instituted a law based on that!
Why so haughty? Seems that the Indonesian government did a good job. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.23...id=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102634126363 http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2012/11/07/236150_local-news.html http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012icha.book...16M
So, you're excusing that ridiculous law because looking at the sun is harmful to the eyes? In case you hadn't noticed, the rest of the world has managed to avoid mass blindness without outlawing the viewing of eclipses. Granted, the people who thought they saw the sun dancing at Fatima probably could have benefited from just such a law...
I doubt there ever was a law rather than just a campaign as the first article I linked stated. And the advice of the Australian Society of Opthalmologists not to watch an eclipse even with approved solar glasses aside: Did it ever occur to you that while you and me enjoyed the luxury of being taught about solar eclipses in clever BBC documentaries and being able to buy pretty much every fancy tat we wanted, the average 1981 Indonesian family would probably have had problems to get their kids past primary school and may have needed to spend a months wages on such glasses? So yeah, while Im certainly not a fan of the authoritarian US-backed Suharto-regime I can see many a good reason for such a campaign by the 1981 Indonesian Government. But I cant see a single good reason to bathe in old-fashioned chauvinistic colonial attitudes of look how stupid these superstitious peasants are that truly enlightened 21th century world-citizens ought to long have overcome. Grow up!
The guy on the show indicated that it was for religious reasons, albeit implicitly rather than explicitly. If the law was in fact only to protect vision and not because of a superstitious belief about a dragon swallowing the sun, then I'll take it easy on them. It just doesn't seem likely that it was strictly for the former reason, considering that other countries don't have such a law. The Indonesian law appears to have been borne out of ancient superstition.
I guess this was done to protect the eyes of the population but still even Muhammad himself would have facepalm . More than 80% of the stars have Arabic names , looks like astronomers of the 8th century did not prayed at the mosque during eclipses .
of around 200 stars named about 50% have Arabic derived names, 39% translated derived from Ptolemic sources and the rest of unkown derivation. Of course there are millions of stars now mostly known by letters and numbers.
I think i have seen Dr. Krauss saying 80% it in a video , in any case have a reputation point for correcting me
This wasn't meant as a correction. These were just figures I remember from an article I read some time ago. The article also gave a list of Arabic names for the stars and various derivations etc. Sorry if I offended you.
Well, maybe the guy on the show was just as biased when it comes to religion and just as prone to Victorian chauvinism when it comes to different cultures as you are. And maybe, just like you, he knew a lot about eclipses and very little about the history of astronomy that would indicate that like a lot of other sciences astronomy was religiously inspired to begin with. I suppose those magnicicient Muslim astronomers, mutmekep mebtioned, pursued it for similar reasons as Christian guys such as Johannes Kepler, who was “motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler
I agree that Durandel is a white supremist who is mocking the brown people for believing in God and other superstititious "voodoo." Maybe the government believed the people would not believe that looking at the eclipse would harm their eyes, so they gave them a religious reason instead. Every time there is an eclipse, a certain number of people are blinded by it. That includes white people who should know better.
