special start to the year of the ox...

26th January 2009 was a special day indeed, not just because it was the first day of the Chinese New Year, but also my sister Alain's birthday...

On top of that, we witnessed the partial solar eclipse that occured during the late afternoon!

Although this certainly wasn't the first solar eclipse in our lifetime, it was the first time we were able to see ...

I wasn't able to capture any photos of the actual eclipsed sun directly with just my usual camera equipment, but I had learned that by using the "Pinhole" projection method - using a piece of paper with a hole in it to "project" the image of the eclipse onto another piece of paper, we could view the eclipse safely without injuring our eyes in the process...

And here are the photos I took of my nieces, Sheryl and Shermaine, trying out this method, while my brother Eric held the "Pinholes"... Partial Solar Eclipse 2009

Clouds obscuring the partial solar eclipse...

Sheryl and Shermaine with the four projected partial solar eclipses...

Four partial solar eclipses...

A closer look...

The above photos were taken around 4.45pm to 4.50pm (Singapore time), which was a whole hour before the supposed full effect of the eclipse, by which time the sun was not only 72% covered by the moon, the whole thing was obscured by thick clouds...

Still, it was a lot of fun!

Will post more about the food we ate for the Chinese New Year in the upcoming posts, so do stay tuned... :-)