An Eclipse


“We are going to the Science Centre to watch a partial eclipse today,” my mother said. “It’s from 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. You are definitely going to enjoy your time there!”

Cool, I was going to watch an eclipse for the very first time! I thought. That afternoon, before we left, I went on the internet to research on all kinds of eclipses. I found out that there were two different kinds of eclipses- annular eclipses and total eclipses.
In an annular eclipse, the moon cann
ot cover the whole sun whereas in a total eclipse, the whole sun is covered by the moon.

Soon enough, the time to go to the Science Centre arrived. My father drove my family and I there and we entered the Science Centre. My spine tingled with excitement as we queued up to enter the Observatory. The queue was so long that it nearly snaked to the entrance! Luckily, we brought a few books to read just in case we had to wait. We whipped out our books and started reading.

We were also given solar glasses to protect our eyes from the sun rays. If we looked directly at the sun, we would get serious eye injuries.
I later found out that the fullest part of the eclipse could be seen at 5:49p.m.


When I first wore the glasses, it seemed like wearing a blindfold. At first, I thought that my glasses were spoilt but later discovered that everyone’s solar glasses were like mine!

When I looked at the sun unintentionally, I saw a red dot the size of a 5-cent coin. No wonder! It will only work when the user looks at the sun!
My family and I sat down on a nice patch of grass and looked at the sun occasionally using our glasses. We could see the moon slowly covering the sun starting at the 7 o’ clock position.


Just as the eclipse was going to be at its fullest, at around 5:30 p.m., the clouds started blocking the eclipse. We hoped that the clouds would clear soon so we decided to wait for a while.

After we waited for approximately another 10 minutes, the clouds had not yet clear. We decided to leave as we were all feeling very tired.

I enjoyed watching my first eclipse even though the eclipse was blocked by the clouds. My father said that there was going to be an eclipse again during July this year, so my family and I decided to keep the glasses to use the next time we watched an eclipse. What my mother said was right – I had enjoyed my time watching the eclipse.

1 comments:

Horselover(jy) 30 January 2009 at 19:59  

i watched the eclipse frm home using the com.

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Hi guys, I'm a student in Singapore, and this are some thoughts and essays I have written over the years.