A partial solar eclipse would have been visible in the western sky over Oahu if the weather had been clearer in the afternoon of Tuesday, March 8.
According to timeanddate.com, a solar eclipse is “when the moon moves between sun and earth, blocking the sun's rays and casting a shadow on earth.” A partial solar eclipse is when the moon does not completely cover the sun, but still casts a large shadow over the earth called a “Penumbra.”
Cloudy skies unfortunately blocked out the celestial phenomenon with reports of rain all across the Aloha state for the majority of the afternoon.
According to Hawaii News Now, the eclipse began above the clouds at 4:33 p.m., reached its peak at 5:37 p.m. where the moon covered about 70 percent of the sun, and concluded at 6:33 p.m., just before the sun tucked under the horizon.Theguardian.com reported a total solar eclipse in Indonesia and surrounding island nations on the same day.
Junaz Amir, a resident of Sigi, Indonesia, told TheGuardian, "The sun totally disappeared.” Amir witnessed the event with his family using special protective glasses. “How amazing this sunny morning suddenly changed to dark," said Amir.
Thousands of people across Indonesia came out to the observatory in central Jakarta as early as 3 a.m. to get a pair of special eclipse viewing glasses and watch their sky turn to black, reported TheGuardian.
Despite forecasts of clouds and showers across Hawaii, The Bishop Museum of Honolulu was prepared to welcome guests to view the eclipse with the help of volunteers from the Hawaiian Astronomical Society and its large and safely-filtered telescopes to provide views of the eclipse in progress.
The museum was able to ignore the rain with a webcast from Micronesia showing the total eclipse. The museum hosted educational shows discussing eclipses in the J. Watumull Planetarium, according to the Bishop Museum’s website. Solar eclipses like this one happen an average of 2.4 times a year according to ABC.
The next partial solar eclipse visible from Hawaii is expected to be August 21, 2017, Timeanddate reported.