Shooting the breeze, while waiting to catch Mars and ‘blood moon’ double bill
Many among the crowd had turned up prepared for a long wait, as they sat by the railings enjoying the cool evening breeze while chatting with friends and fellow enthusiasts.
SINGAPORE — Seven hours before the longest “blood moon” eclipse of the century made its appearance on Saturday morning (July 28), Yee Jia Chen and his friends from the School of Science and Technology’s Astronomy Club were excitedly setting up their gear at the rooftop of the Singapore Maritime Gallery.
Given that this was also planet Mars’ closest approach to Earth in 15 years, the 12 boys and their teacher were not about to miss the opportunity of a lifetime. It took them about two hours to complete their preparatory work on Friday evening, linking one of their two telescopes to a camera so that they could livestream the astronomical double bill on their school’s YouTube channel.
The teenagers even took shifts to man the equipment so they could get enough rest throughout the night.
“I was initially stressed as I had to plan the shifts of those coming as you can’t have everyone staying up for eight hours,” said Secondary 2 student Jia Chen, 14.
Nevertheless, the astronomy enthusiast, who started taking an interest in the subject after his Primary School Leaving Examination, could not hide his excitement at catching the eclipse.
He added: “I find practical astronomy (star gazing and observations of constellations) quite fun, where you get to set up the telescopes. To me, it’s the most important part because you can just Google the images”
“It’s (the eclipse on Saturday) a really rare occasion for the Earth, Mars and the sun to be in a straight line.”
The budding astronomers were part of the 200-strong crowd that had turned up at 11.30pm, almost two hours ahead of the eclipse, which kicked off at 1.14am on Saturday with the partial lunar eclipse. The total eclipse — when the entirety of the moon is in the Earth’s shadow — will occur between 3.30am and 5.13am.
Many among the crowd had turned up prepared for a long wait, as they sat by the railings enjoying the cool evening breeze while chatting with friends and fellow enthusiasts. Others were gathered around the rows of telescopes set up mostly by volunteers from SingAstro, a local online astronomy forum.
Private bus contractor Thomas Yip, 38, was one of the 20 volunteers who had helped organise the event at the Maritime Gallery.
They had chosen the venue as it is near the Marina Bay MRT station, and some of them had caught the last eclipse there in January as it provided an unobstructed view of the night sky.
Armed with about 15 of their personal telescopes, the members stationed themselves by their equipment to share information about the planets and the eclipse with members of the public.
“We’re expecting about a thousand people to show up tonight... and we are happy to see more Singaporeans showing interest in astronomy,” added Mr Yip.
Other enthusiasts like Nigel Ng, 18, who is a member of Singapore Polytechnic Astronomers, had gathered at the rooftop from 7.30pm.
The Year 2 aeronautical engineering student brought his own telescope, and told TODAY that he was particularly looking forward to this eclipse as the next one, which will occur next year, will not be visible in Singapore.
With a few hours to go before the eclipse, there were others like research analyst Prerana who was sitting down and enjoying the night breeze. The 24-year-old had arrived with two other colleagues at around 10pm.
“It’s a Friday night and a good time to be out and just do something different... we’re expecting a spectacular view tonight,” she said.
The lunar eclipse — the longest one observable from Singapore in recent memory — is happening alongside a Mars opposition — where the red planet will appear extra bright and large, as it is at its closest to Earth since 2003.
It will last 1 hour 43 minutes, only 4 minutes shy of the longest possible total lunar eclipse, according to United States-based radio series EarthSky. As compared to January's eclipse which lasted 1 hour 2 minutes, observers will have 41 minutes more to catch the natural phenomenon this time.
According to American science agency Nasa, the next time a lunar eclipse will be visible in Singapore will be on May 26, 2021.
