Article published in the newspaper 'Jurnalul national'

Star-Gate In A Romanian Village

18/10/2008, Alexandra Zotta

In the village of Horodnicul de Jos, Suceava County, Romania, lives one of the most passionate promoters of science in the rural areas: Dimitrie Olenici fell in love with the night skyline early in his childhood, went on to study physics and directed his life to a Universe of knowledge, of admiration directed towards the stars and planets that you are invited to discover.

"Like any other child living in the countryside, I was fascinated by the beauty of the night sky. There is an astronomical event that still lingers in my mind", says Olenici, while tinkering on something at the Suceava Planetarium.

The Childhood Meteors

"I recall to this day how my father took me in his arms, when I was around four or five years old, to show me a comet that was visible in the East. Later on, as a school boy, I wandered the fields beside my father – he was guarding the farmers' fields at that time – and while I lay on my back on a bed of hay built up in a cart, I gazed at the night sky. I did not know then that the "falling stars" I watched were really meteors, meteors from the Perseid stream. We talked about the stars and the legends their names carried, and I dreamed of having one day my own telescope." So begins the life story of Olenici, one of the most passionate and active astronomers in Romania. Now his dream has come true, and he continues to watch the stars, accompanied by people from all over the country and also from abroad, gathered to see something they've never seen before: a planetarium and an astronomical observatory in the countryside.

Close To the Stars

Even though he has been for some time now a curator-astronomer at the Planetarium in Suceava, he always wanted to bring the stars a little closer. He took his love of stars one step further by painting the ceiling of his apartment with mythological characters depicting various constellations in the sky. But that wasn't enough either, so he decided to build his own,

private astronomical observatory in his native village of Horodnicul de Jos, on a wide strip of land that also accommodates a pond and a vegetable garden.

Each year the Olenicis host the Festival of the Perseids in Horodnicul de Jos. Hospitable, like most of the families from Bucovina, the Olenicis welcome the people that come in droves every year, to see the meteor shower, far away from city pollution. Many of the people sleeping over at the Olenicis, after watching the astronomical show, refuse to go back inside to their own rooms, and prefer to sleep under the stars, in a stack of hay.

Fig.1: Observing the Perseids

The Olenicis' Astronomical Observatory

Professor Olenici's courtyard is today the scene of an astronomical observatory, built by the whole family. This private astronomical observatory in Horodnicul de Jos is not the only one of its kind in Romania, as Olenici explains:

"After I visited the observatory built by the part-time astronomer Mircea Corpordean in Baciu village next to Cluj-Napoca city, that of Ioan Zeidel in the city of Pitesti, and that of Nicolae Reinholz in Zadareni village, Arad County, I told myself that I should not rest for one day until I could see my own private astronomical observatory."

He started building in 2000 in his spare time along with one of his nephews. After six years of hard work, people could see up close how the stars shine in Horodnicul de Jos. The building is two stories high, the

outside is painted in the national colors of the Romanian flag, there is room inside for only a couple of people at a time, and above a hexagonal 1.75 meters-high room there is a hexagonal platform one meter high and smaller on the sides (1.25 m). This is rounded at the top with a two-meter wide, polyhedral dome. At the exterior there is a wider edge that guides the dome on three 25 cm wheels.

Fig. 2: Building the cupola of the astronomical observatory

If you go to Horodnic and you see this little house, surrounded by a moat in which the professor's nephew has put a small boat, be sure to know that this is one of the few private astronomical observatories in Romania. Just outside the observatory door, the willows come down to the benches where people wait in line to watch through the magic eye – a Dobsonian telescope, with a 25 cm wide lens and a 1.25 m focal distance.

At the opening in 2006, many foreign visitors were present, some coming from as far away as New Zealand, but also from Spain, UK, Norway and the United States. The first to sign the visitors' book was the Romanian astronomer Ovidiu Vaduvescu, who was also in charge of cutting the red-ribbon at the inauguration ceremony.

Fig. 3: The first participants in meteor observations in August 2006

The Only Functional Private Planetarium

Starting this year, Olenici extended his offerings for science lovers and star seekers by setting up a Japanese-made planetarium inside an old barn. Right at the front entrance in the Olenicis' courtyard you spot a little sign above the wooden door of the barn: "Planetariu" (the Romanian word for Planetarium) stands written on the metal sign covered with glass.

Fig. 4: The entrance of the rustic planetarium

This is the first evidence of the professor's love for the stars. Ever since the planetarium was officially opened this summer (Dimitrie and another

nephew worked alone to build this astronomical wonder), hundreds of people have had a new way of watching the stars and have found out the incredible stories hidden behind every constellation. By setting up this rural planetarium, Professor Olenici has managed to enrich the next generation of astronomers, who will continue to solve the riddles of the Universe, and who will make us proud by working with ESA or NASA. Ever since the construction of the observatory began, the professor dreamed of having a planetarium of his own. He wanted to build it himself, just as he built the observatory, but his busy schedule always postponed his audacious plans.

Fig.5: Participants at the planetarium inauguration in Horodnic de Jos

American Help

He found out from his UK friend and astronomer Thomas Goodey about the availability of a Japanese-made planetarium projector, a GoTo Ex3 model, able to depict 500 of the 6,000 stars which are visible to the naked eye in the night sky.

Fig 6: A GoTo Ex3 planetarium in a rustic dome in Horodnic de Jos, Romania

The seller was an amateur astronomer in the US, Mr. Kenneth Miller, and he was willing to sell his planetarium for $1,500. The problem was that the Professor didn't have the money, and the transport of the device would have cost him $300. His good friend Thomas Goodey was there to help with the money needed, and some friends in the States transported the device for only $50. After purchasing it, the Olenici family started working on the building that would become the planetarium, where crowds of children were to be amazed throughout the festival in August. Olenici covered the walls and the floor of the barn with wooden boards and then put up a 4.5-meter cardboard dome where the stars were to be projected.

Fig.7: Making the planetarium cupola from cardboard

"The Festival on the Farm"

Everyone can see that the astronomer's nephews are proud to help organize the Festival of Perseids. While his nephew Paul adorned the observatory building with a small moat to make it look like a castle,

Fig. 8: Paul digging the circular moat around the observatory

his other nephew Claudiu helped him build the dome of the planetarium.

Fig.9: Claudiu covering the planetarium cupola with white paper

The little girls Ioana, Teodora, Mona and Alina are of much help in the kitchen. For three years now they've been preparing the meals for the festival participants. Family members, friends, neighbors and village authorities – they all were contaminated with the Olenicis' enthusiasm for studying the stars. And, at the time of the Festival of the Perseids, all neighbors chip in with farm products for the meal that is set up on tables laid out in the yard, and the city hall cuts off the public lighting to give the night sky a chance to glow unhindered by artificial light.

Fig.10: The young astronomers at lunch ( The carpet bears Romanian solar motifs)

The Planetarium Library

After setting up the planetarium, the professor enriched it with astronomical maps and books he bought over the years from all over the world, from bookstores or from antiquaries often unaware of the treasure they hold on their shelves. In this rural planetarium we find a very old Romanian astronomy course written before Pluto, the farthest planet of our solar system, had been discovered. This course certainly couldn't be missing from the collection of the professor, who told us that in a countryside planetarium you have to dress properly. The mandatory uniform: a traditional costume sewn in the village – a tight-looking jacket called a "bundita" decked with patterns of wool flowers, and a straw hat.

Fig.11: In the hall of the GoTo Ex3 planetarium of Horodnic de Jos

A Leap Into Science

Back at the publicly owned observatory in Suceava County, the place where Olenici has spent 30 years of his life, we were surprised to find a Foucault pendulum which makes the construction of the observatory and the planetarium at Horodnic seem like a child's game.

The pendulum was brought by Thomas Goodey from the UK, where it was built after a plan made by Olenici and his British friend. With the help of this pendulum the two astronomers conduct important experiments, which could modify the laws of physics.

The first such experiments were conducted in the Romanian city Iasi by Gheorghe Jeverdan, Gheorghe Rusu and Virgil Antonescu on February 15, 1961 during a solar eclipse.

Olenici re-enacted part of their experiment with a 14.75-meter long Foucault pendulum during the total solar eclipse of August 11, 1999. He noticed a shortening in the oscillation time of the pendulum, as the three professors did almost 50 years before. During other astronomical events,

such as lunar eclipses and conjunctions and oppositions of planets, Olenici's observations have confirmed changes in the speed of rotation of the oscillation plane of a pendulum. This type of change was first discovered by the Nobel Prize laureate Maurice Allais, and this is why this effect is called now "the Allais effect."Allais invited Olenici to Paris, in September 2001, to take part in a scientific congress dedicated to the anomalies of pendulum movement during solar eclipses. Such deviations of pendulums were not taken into consideration when the law of gravity was formulated, and they could bring about changes in the understanding of that law.

Fig. 12: In Paris with Prof. Ieronim Mihaila ( left) and Nobel laureate Maurice Allais ( right)

The Olenici-Goodey Pendulum

Since the number of scientists involved in testing the law of gravity is very small, they constantly communicate and often conduct joint experiments. This is how we met Goodey in Suceava, who came here from as far away as Rochester, UK, for a set of experiments with Olenici, using the Foucault pendulum. They met in 2004 when, after finding out about the professor's passion for this kind of experiments, he decided to take a trip to northern Romania to meet him personally. The British astronomer told us that the pendulum we were seeing was in fact a modern apparatus, built after the simpler manual pendulum made by professor Olenici. "This apparatus repeats its operation over and over again. What we want to see is if sometimes it acts a little bit differently. The pendulum acts differently only due to an external influence. It's an extremely sensitive apparatus", said the British scientist. The difference between the two devices is the high precision of the mechanical one and, of course, the price. While the

professor spent 500 dollars to build the manual one, the cost of the pendulum built in the UK has been approximately 30,000 dollars. "The cost of a decent car", jokes Goodey. Then his tone of voice becomes serious again: This device – the pendulum – is healthy for the mind. Out of respect for his "inspiration" – because that's how Thomas Goodey describes Professor Olenici, he decided to transport the device to Suceava where from time to time he comes to conduct experiments.

Fig.13: Talking with Thomas Goodey about anomalies of the pendulum

His Own Universe

The Suceava planetarium is indeed more complex than the private one Olenici has back in his home village, but at the end of the day what really counts is the talent people tell their stories with, and Olenici uses that to the fullest, no matter what the location. He knows so many legends about the celestial bodies that he can talk about them for hours and hours. The Horodnic observatory is a window to the sky opened by Dimitrie Olenici every time the children ask him to show them the moon, the stars, the planets or meteors. The astronomical "Universe" in Horodnic is a frontier where the 10 year-old child who dreams to own a telescope meets the scientist who conducts experiments with the Foucault pendulum.

Fig.14: In the astronomical observatory of Horodnic de Jos.

The Dream

Professor Olenici's passion for physics can be seen in his eyes. He talks fluently about any astronomical phenomenon – he is a physics graduate and easily understands everything in this field. The astronomy program he showed us in Suceava planetarium (where the projector is a Zeiss ZKP model, and which is the biggest planetarium dome in Romania) began with a short introduction to the world of stars and constellations. Every year at the festival in Horodnic, he makes the same introduction in various different ways, opening the window to a world of kings, queens and mythological characters.

-o0o-