Cloud may block rare solar eclipse view for Hawke’s Bay

If you were hoping to see the solar eclipse in Hawke’s Bay on Monday morning, you may be out of luck.

But there is a sunny side to it.

A rare partial solar eclipse will be going over the country early on Monday.

A solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, partially or completely blocking the sun’s light.

It will only be visible for a handful of countries and will be the first that New Zealand will see this decade.

This follows a lunar eclipse that resulted in a blood moon on September 8.

Holt Planetarium director Bruce Ngataierua said the partial eclipse would be visible from about 5.41am and finish by 8.36am with the moon covering 61% of the sun.

A solar eclipse above Katikati in Bay of Plenty in 2012.

However, MetService meteorologist Katie Hillyer has bad news for keen stargazers.

“It’s unfortunately not looking very good for Hawke’s Bay, it’s not looking very good for most of New Zealand,” she said.

“I think there will be a fair bit of cloud about ... but it is the sort of cloud that sometimes we get some reasonable gaps in there.

“I’d maybe pop it at about a 10 to 20% chance that people get a glimpse of it.”

More would be known closer to the time, she said.

But it’s not all bad news for sun enthusiasts.

The spring equinox will occur on Tuesday at 6.19am, bringing longer daylight hours.

September 1 is widely accepted as the first day of meteorological spring in New Zealand but, astronomically speaking, it begins when the sun crosses the celestial equator from south to north, and day and night are of nearly equal length across the Earth.

“So if you think about the increase and decrease in daylight hours, it follows like a wave pattern,” Hillyer said.

“At the spring equinox will be when we’ve reached that peak of gaining the most amount of minutes on to our daylight hours.

“So it will start to flow from there as we head towards the longest day of the year [on December 22].”

Hillyer said to expect longer days and hopefully warmer and sunnier weather after the equinox.

Highs of between 19C and 21C are predicted for Hawke’s Bay throughout the week.

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in Britain, Germany, and New Zealand.