View photosKEY POINTS:
Take a good look at these pictures of yesterday's solar eclipse - another one won't come our way for four years.
The partial eclipse started in Auckland at 4.48pm and finished about two hours later.
The time of maximum eclipse in the region was at 5.52pm when 47 per cent of the sun was covered by the moon.
The last clear partial solar eclipse was on August 22, 1998, and the next will not be until November 14, 2012.
The eclipse is partial because the orbit of the moon is not a circle - it is a stretched circle, or ellipse. As such, the moon sometimes appears larger or smaller in the night sky, depending on its orbit.
Yesterday's annular, or ring-shaped, eclipse happened as the moon was at its smaller apparent size - not quite large enough to completely cover the sun's face. This differs from a total solar eclipse, which occurs when the sun's light is completely blocked by the moon.
Stardome observatory education manager Graham Murray said it was nicknamed the Hermit's eclipse because there was a limited vantage point for the occasion.
"It's a remarkably narrow strip of the Earth that gets totality for any eclipse," he said.
"With this one, the strip runs across the Antarctic peninsula towards Scott Base - that's hermit landscape. It is just out of reach."
* The pictures above were taken using a tripod and filter, with normal aperture and shutter speeds. Atmospheric disturbance makes the corners of the moon appear flatter in the middle photo.
