The Last Eclipse of 2019

What a way to close of 2019 than with a full annular eclipse which occurred on Boxing Day (26 December) in South East Asia. This would be my second time watching a solar eclipse in Singapore. The first time was in 2016 and you can view my experience here. This time it was a full annular eclipse and the next one won’t occur until 28 February 2063. Hmm… I don’t think I will be around then to see it.

Boxing Day is a working day in Singapore, but being the holiday season, most people were either on leave or playing truant from the office to view the eclipse. It also helped that the eclipse was forecast to occur at 1.22 pm that day and I guessed many people took an extended lunch break to watch it. We all prayed that it wouldn’t be cloudy or raining during that time as December is also the monsoon season with rain on most days. The shadow of the Moon started crawling across the Sun’s face after 11.30 am and by 1.00 pm almost the whole Sun was covered.

As the Moon started to cover the Sun, dark clouds started to obscure the view. They proved to actually make for more dramatic photos.

More clouds started to roll in as the full eclipse started. It was going to be a make or break moment to catch the eclipse. A break in the clouds gave me this dramatic shot of the Sun and Moon sitting in a sea of clouds. It does remind me of that NASA photo of the Crab Nebula with the remnant of a star that went supernova.

Although this was a full eclipse, it was also an annular eclipse where the Moon does not fully cover the Sun. So we would see a “Ring of Fire” around the Moon. Lucky for me, the dark clouds had passed when the full eclipse occurred.