Magical moment for sky watchers

There isn't much that goes on in the heavens unobserved by aviation meteorologist and avid astronomer Bruce Buckby.

Wild horses wouldn't have stopped him from studying the moon's partial eclipse of the sun yesterday morning.

"This is the first time in my life I have seen a full solar eclipse, and I will be in my 80s when the next one comes around. I would've been very upset to miss this one," he said as he set himself up outside his home in Kaitaia.

Bruce's fascination with astronomy began when he was a school boy at Lynfield College in Auckland.

His science teacher, one Lionel Warner, was president of the Astronomical Society and got Bruce hooked on gazing at the sky.

"I am fascinated with it. Back in the '60s they still thought there was life on Mars and little green men running around.

"It amazed me," he said.

Bruce's grandfather was also an avid astronomer, leading Bruce to suspect that it's in his genes. Something has certainly been passed down to his daughter, Lana, who was as keen to see yesterday's phenomenon as her father was.

It wasn't the best show ever - Bruce said the transit of Venus was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen - but it was well worth waiting for.

"I predicted the view would be the best up here in the North, better than Auckland," he said, and he was right.

"They said we'd get 92 per cent and I reckon we got that, but I wish it had been more," he said.

The local birdlife was clearly impressed, too.

Everything fell silent during the peak of the eclipse, "quite eerie", according to photographer Petrina Hodgson, and then, when the sun peeked through again, it was greeted with the crowing of a rooster.