On 29 March, the Moon passed in front of the Sun for nearly four
minutes, and day turned into night. I visited Turkey to watch
the 2006 total solar eclipse -a rare event and one that I
watched with several million people across Africa and Eastern
Europe. A total eclipse of a Sun begins when the Moon first
begins to move in front of the Sun. For the next hour, more of
the Sun disappears and looks like a crescent. On 29 March, this
started around 1 pm. Within thirty minutes the light around us
began to fade and the temperature dropped from 20 to about 14
degrees Celsius. People watched the Sun, through their special
eclipse glasses As thesky got darker and birds flew into trees
thinking it was night. Stars began to appear in the Sky – I even
saw Venus. A dog in the street was quite confused and didn’t
know what was happening. Then just after lunch at 1.55 pm, the
last piece of the Sun was covered by the Moon and the sky turned
black. We took off our eclipse glasses and could see the ghostly
haze of the Sun’s co