Have you ever seen a solar eclipse with the naked eye? I hadn’t. Not until 10 May 2013. Not until Adam told me I was seeing one.
Partial Solar Eclipse in Solo
Last week we attended ABF (Asean Blogger Festival) 2013 that was held in Solo from 9-12 May 2013. ABF is a conference for bloggers and social media enthusiasts from all ASEAN countries. It was a big event with almost 300 participants! We were excited to meet that many bloggers since we’re quite new in this blogging world.
Anyway, back to the story. We stayed in Sahid Jaya Hotel, 6th floor, with nice window view showing the town. Late night on 9th May 2013, from twitter, we found out that there was gonna be a partial solar eclipse the next day that can be seen from some parts of Indonesia. Checking the approximate time, we couldn’t find the time for Solo. The closest was Semarang, which could be seen at 5.43 am. Being tired after the long journey that day, we couldn’t be bothered chasing the eclipse and set the alarm for 5.45am (because of the early schedule for the next day!!).
What I thought was just ‘normal’ sunrise
The alarm rang at 5.45 am. I walked to reach my iPad, opened the window and saw the sun hadn’t risen yet. Back to the bed with my iPad, I scrolled the timeline on twitter and saw somebody tweeted, ” Anybody saw the eclipse? Share your photo with us, please.” Ah yes, I forgot about the eclipse. Thinking that we had missed the eclipse, I walked slowly to the window, opened the curtains and saw ‘very normal’ sunrise. The sun was still on the horizon glowing a fiery orange against the moody morning sky.
Since I rarely wake up early to see sunrises, I took my camera and started capturing the scene. At least I’d have some sunrise pictures, I thought. I don’t have a DSLR camera, only a Panasonic TZ30 which has 20x zoom (oh yes, I usually use the zoom to stalk people across the river). So I zoomed in…..zoomed in……zoomed in…and clicked! With some more shots, I showed Adam the pictures. “No eclipse, the sun is also a bit blocked by the cloud.” I said.
The ‘zoomed-in’ solar eclipse
Looking at my picture, Adam was shocked and shouted, “That was amazing!” I was still confused. “That’s solar eclipse happening at the moment!” I was still confused, but I went back to the window anyway to take some more shots, finding that the sun had gone a bit higher, so I couldn’t get more zoomed-in pictures.
My last shot of the solar eclipse
“I was expecting a ring.”
“Well it depends on the location. In some areas you can see the moon totally blocks the sun so it looks like a ring. But here the moon only partially blocked the sun so it looked like a giant Pac-man.”
I was happy that I ‘accidentally’ took that amazing partial solar eclipse shot. I still couldn’t believe it was that amazing until I shared the picture on twitter and it was retweeted massively all around the world. I got almost 1000 retweets on that picture, thanks to the unrecognized giant Pac-man and ABF2013. Thanks for your appreciation! 🙂
Wow, amazing 🙂
Senang banget ya kalau dapat momen yang seperti itu.
Btw, terima kasih sudah datang ke ABFI, mohon maaf kalau banyak kekurangan.
Kami yang harus ngucapin banyak terima kasih ke Mbak Indah Juli karena udah banyak ngebantuin pas di ABFI. Mbak Indah tinggalnya di Jakarta kah? Kapan2 kalo kami ke Jakarta kita ngobrol2 lagi ya…kmrn pas ABFI ga sempet ngobrol banyak karena mbak Indah Juli super sibuk…hehe
Hey, I was in Sahid Jaya too for ABFI2013 and stayed at the 7th floor. Too bad I didn’t meet you, or maybe we met but we didn’t have a chance to know each other. You guys are a cool couple. I started following you on twitter long before ABFI2013. How come I missed you guys since we stayed in the same hotel.
Anyway, I didn’t see the eclipse because I slept early. Javanese believes that eclipse, especially in malam Jumat Kliwon (the night before Jumat Kliwon) will bring bad luck for everybody. Experts try to convince them that it’s just a natural phenomenon. But it only works for the younger generation. The elder chooses to stay inside, dim the light and pray.
Hope I can see you in other opportunities. Looking forward to read your traveling stories and I have never been in Vietnam.
Hai Mbak Lusi, yeah…too bad we didn’t have time to chat. There were so many new people that we’ve never met before! Where do you live? Maybe we can meet up some time. About the solar eclipse, it happened in the morning. I’m sure you already woke up because it was near breakfast time 😉 We were just lucky to see that phenomena. And yes, I think I remember that myth was told when I was young. 😉
lho, kok aku gak tau ada solar eclipse? aaaaah sebeeeeel :((
baca postingan ini bikin sedih,,, aku tinggal di semarang tapi nggak tau ada solar eclipse. mungkin karena kebiasaan bangun siang juga. hiks hiks *pasang alarm jam 8 pagi *eh
Ini bener2 faktor ‘luck’ koq 🙂
Biasanya kita malah memang ga suka bangun sepagi itu, ya kmrn itu gara2 jadwal acaranya agak pagi jadinya kita pasang alarm sepagi itu..hehe 😉
Wow..such a cool solar eclipse. never seen it in my life, you’re so lucky…I admire your blog..thanks for sharing so many things bout traveling. hope to meet you someday on the road. Cheers !