The CD you have just inserted in your computer is the result of my desire to
share with you a number of wonderful visual experiences that nature can reveal
to a sensitive viewer. A total solar eclipse made a deep impression on me
because within a couple of minutes it enabled me to see and understand a
multitude of very interesting phenomena. Throughout my life I have been convinced
that there is no greater adventure than the adventure of discovery. Each
thriller or sci-fi film is poor nothing when compared to adventure of discovering
the fascinating laws, phenomena and beauty of nature. The beauty of these
adventures lies in the fact that they can take place anywhere, even at home
in the kitchen over some notes jotted down with a pencil on a crumpled scrap
of paper. My relation to science is that of a pure romantic.
My idea of a scientist is that of a man obsessed with the desire for discovery who,
although weak from hunger, wades knee-deep in mud searching for an imprint of
an ancient species of horsetail, or who falls asleep through exhaustion at four
o'clock in the morning in his lab, down in the cellar, leaning against his
beloved experimental apparatus which is permanently on the verge of exploding,
or he is a man absent-mindedly walking up and down the room ignoring other
people's questions or remarks as he digs deep into the axioms of multi-value
logic. A scientist is a man who will spend his last money for a box of CDs
with 20 gigabytes of cosmic noise because with a probability of 10
-7
they contain a record of an impulse of Z-rays which is the last missing link of
his all-explaining general theory, understandable only to himself and, even then,
only for a maximum of 20 minutes a day. The greatest reward for a scientist
is neither money nor fame, but discovery. As I am first and foremost a teacher
who is in love with his job I would like this desire for discovery to rub off
onto my students. Maybe this will not put them on the well-trodden road to
affluence and comfort, but I am absolutely positive about one thing. The
discovery itself is more important than the result of it. Those who do walk
down the road of discovery know why they have been out on this planet.
We are here to discover and understand.
Acknowledgements
Before the CD could see the light of day a lot of effort had to be put into it.
Without huge amounts of understanding and assistance from all my family I would
never have been able to finish my work on the CD.
I would like to thank my wife
Zuzana for her painstaking
proofreading of the text and for
staying by my side through thick and thin.
Thank you to my older daughter Hana for her excellent work
during the expedition where she took pictures of the outer corona and for her
assistance with computer work, on proofreading the text, and on the graphics.
Thank you to my younger daughter Zdena for her excellent
work during the expedition where she took wide-angle pictures of the sky and
the landscape. I also thank her for her comments on the text.
I would like to thank Igor Medek for the excellent
"fish-eye" pictures.
Thank you to both the expedition drivers, Jiří Hajda and
Dalibor Martišek, for driving us safely there and back.
Thank you to Fred Espenak, the man I never had the opportunity to meet with,
however his excellent Web pages
( http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html )
concerning solar and lunar eclipses played very important role in our expedition planning.
Enjoy this CD.
