What a treat to have a second eclipse viewing in 2019. It was not another total eclipse that we usually chase after, rather an annular one.
Annular eclipses are not spectacular (said an eclipse expert to us), because they are usually viewable only through eclipse glasses or filters; the sun may be more than 90% blocked by the moon, but it is still too bright to look at with the naked eye. However, there are visual effects similar to those of totality that could be be interesting..
But this one on Boxing Day particularly appealed to us for a couple of reasons; firstly we had never seen one before and secondly it was going to be visible from Singapore.
Of course one has to be pessimistic about eclipses in the tropics with high probability of cloud cover and difficulty of forecasting weather behaviour. In fact, on Christmas Day, the day before the eclipse, the weather experts were still predicting cloudy skies and even rain.
Even though on the morning of Boxing Day, Eclipse Day, the sky was quite clear, I knew that it might not last as the heat and humidity of the tropics could soon form clouds through the convection of warm moisture air. The eventuality of afternoon rain in the early afternoons is well known it would coincide with be the peak of the eclipse peak at 1.37pm!.
A couple of days earlier I had found a spot on the large roof top garden of the Changi City shopping centre. It is a quiet shopping centre and not likely to have a throng of curious eclipse watchers jostling for space. Indeed at the predicted "first contact" time of 11.22 am, I was practically alone apart from a man with two young children and a business man from a nearby office. I passed around my eclipse glasses to share the view of the first "bite" with the few uninitiated people around me.
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| 11.29am, about 7 mins after First Contact. |
It would take a keen eclipse observer to be intrigued by the rather uninteresting image viewed through a solar filter and I expected the enthusiasm of the people around me to dissipate quickly. To ensure they did not miss the more interesting part, I suggested, especially to the man with two children that they return in an hour when more of the sun would be covered.
The other person next to me, the business man, was surprisingly interested. At my suggestion, he quickly downloaded an Eclipse app and started searching for any future eclipse in Japan - for he married a Japanese! He also started attempting to take mobile phone photos through one of my eclipse filter. It was clumsy but he managed some.
Having been through a number of total eclipses in the past, I took only a few photos in the early phases as I was only interested in the main part of the event, when the annular eclipse starts. I would activate my Pluto Trigger to fire my SLR with bracketed shots every few seconds over a four minute period that included one-minute annular phase.
A few more people joined us. The man with the children did return and surprisingly also became quite absorbed with the gradually disappearing sun, which was becoming more and more like a crescent.
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| 12.36pm, about an hour and 12 min after First Contact. |
Soon nearly everyone was trying to take photos using my eclipse glasses passed from hand to hand. One discovered that photos are easier with the glasses held slightly away from the camera, which I was never to test out for I was busy adjusting the camera to keep up with the shifting image as the earth rotates (Ah, I should have invested in a sun-tracking mechanism). I was also worried about my tripod being knocked over by the surrounding people.
As the time gets closer to the annular peak, more people turned up; there was a group of Muslim young ladies, workers in their overalls and amateur photograpers with powerful telephotos (but no filters). My wife and my sister also joined us, having shrewedly decided that the eclipse event was only worth watching at the climax, not the build up to it. My sister would have preferred that we join the thousands at one of the publicised parks where at least the atmsophere of a crowd would add spice to the otherwise non-event.
Many asked us questions about the eclipse, and Kay and I found ourselves the provider of eclipse information unlike in the previous eclipses when we were mere amateurs in the company of astronomers and solar scientists. This time, we were the experts!
Soon we had more to watch than just the slowly thinning crescent - the appearance of clouds, with increasing thickness in parts. Alas, is this the game spoiler that the tropics has always been promising?
The sun would totally disappear, and then teasingly reappear, and people around me would rush to snap more photos. We soon realised that there were fleeting moments when the crescent was easily visible to the naked eye, and mobile phone cameras, through the clouds. Indeed some of the people around had captured interesting photos, with the crescent amidst a blue sky and dark clouds.
Close the maximum eclipse, with the SLR taking photos automatically, I had more time to look around. I observed birds flying overhead, unusual at that time of the day and shadows of shrubs nearby were showing crescent shaped images where the light fell through. Around us the light was subdued and yet there was enhanced clarity as shadows became sharper and contrasts increased.
As we got to minutes before the totality of annular eclipse, there was much tension and excitement because the clouds were playing a game of hide and seek with us watchers. It could be total frustration if the clouds were any thicker or extensive, but they were not.
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| Maximum annular eclipse. The sun was 94% blocked by the moon. |
I had only found out a few days before the eclipse that the annular totality was only visible south of a line across the northern part of Singapore; places like Pasir Ris and Woodlands would only see a thin crescent. In fact, the centre line of the eclipse along which a perfectly symmetrical annulus was visible, ran across one of Indonesia's Riau Islands south of the main Singapore. Where we were in Changi City, the annulus was asymmetrical as captured by my camera.
Ironically, as I found out, Singapore and other tropical places, provide great opportunities for aesthetically interesting partial or annular eclipse photos because the clouds can provide just the sufficient filtering of the sun's ray, as the following mobile phone photos show.
One of the best I have seen from those people around me was Joanne's, another observer in the Changi City crowd.
