HONG KONG: All eyes were on the sun. The anticipation was palpable. That was the picture recreated many times before the cool black silhouette of the moon crept across the sun's disk, eating away at the incandescent sphere and casting the city in its umbra.

People in Hong Kong witnessed the largest and most impressive partial solar eclipse in over half a century yesterday.

Fine weather gave Hongkongers an unobstructed view of the sky as the moon moved between the earth and the sun, covering as much as three quarters of the Solar Orb at 9:25 am. The elevation of the sun was high which made the long-awaited partial eclipse highly visible.

The rare spectacle drew swaths of stargazers with their light-filtering equipment, home-made pin-hole cameras and sunglasses to keep out the sun's rays.

City enthusiasts did not seem disappointed they were unable to see a total eclipse. A crowd of several hundred gathered outside the Space Museum early yesterday morning. Some started queuing from 6 am.

Man Tin Hang, a sixth grader with a passion for astronomy, was first in line with his grandfather outside the Space Museum. He said he had learnt about solar eclipses from the textbook and was curious to see what an eclipse looked like.

The Space Museum handed out special glasses for viewing the celestial event.

Acting Senior Scientific Officer (Meteorological Forecast System) Chan Pak Wai said the ultraviolet index for the city experienced a dip between 9 am and 10 am, which he believes was related to the partial eclipse.

The next solar eclipse observable in Hong Kong will be on January 15, 2010.

(HK Edition 07/23/2009 page1)