Total eclipse of the heart: Family channels passion for chasing eclipses around the world into book

SINGAPORE – When Koh Joo Beng, 66, was doing national service as a young man, he was sometimes assigned guard duty outdoors.

He recalls his overnight shifts on the island of Pulau Tekong during his first three months of basic military training: “You’re looking up at the sky and you see shapes that move. But it’s not the stars that are moving – you are.”

Constellations shift their positions at night throughout the year. But they appear to move because of the motion of the Earth, which rotates on its axis and orbits the Sun.

Koh’s star-gazing days in NS sparked an interest in astronomy and chasing solar eclipses decades later. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly between the Earth and the Sun, blocking all or some of the Sun’s rays from reaching the Earth.

The retired research and development director, who has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, acquired a master’s degree in astronomy from Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology in middle age. Around the same time, he and his wife Janet Tay ticked off his bucket-list goal of experiencing their first total solar eclipse in 2008.

The couple have since spent holidays chasing 14 solar eclipses across the continents, eventually drawing their three adult sons into this celestial quest.

Koh and his eldest son Jared Koh recently wrote and self-published a book titled Chasing Totality, which includes information on how to make the most of the total solar eclipse on Aug 12, which will pass over Greenland, Iceland and Spain. They will be viewing this eclipse – the elder Koh’s 15th – from a cruise ship off the coast of northern Spain, in a 16-strong group comprising family and friends.

Totality refers to the brief peak, lasting a couple of minutes, of a total solar eclipse when the Sun is completely blocked by the Moon, turning the sky dark as night. The entire eclipse could span several hours.

The Tintin factor

The couple’s first journey, organised by a firm that customises trips for eclipse chasers, took them to the edge of China’s Gobi Desert in Gansu province in 2008. Koh became hooked.

He and Tay, 70, a retired manager who used to work in the battery manufacturing industry, have since chased total solar eclipses across Chile, Kenya, the Faroe Islands, Australia, Indonesia and the US. A “diamond ring” effect is seen during such eclipses, where a shining “diamond” looks like it is set in a bright ring around the Moon’s silhouette.

They were in town for the annular solar eclipse that took place in Singapore in 2019. This kind of eclipse occurs when the Moon passes in front of the Sun, but appears too small to cover it completely, such that a golden “ring of fire” seems to flame around the darkened Moon.

As an adolescent, Koh had read the Tintin comic book Prisoners Of The Sun, whose plot famously features a solar eclipse.

Reading about the eponymous boy detective’s adventures was the first time he realised the impact the celestial event could have.

The closest he has come to this atavistic thrill – that the sun could be “stolen” – was when he heard thunderous clacking during a total solar eclipse in 2016 at Tidore Island in Indonesia.

At the time, the dolo-dolo tradition – characterised by the beating of bamboo drums across the villages in the area during a solar or lunar eclipse – was showcased for foreign visitors. According to folklore, the noise drives away the dragon that is swallowing the Sun or Moon.

Some of the couple’s eclipse-spotting trips have been a “failure”, they say.

In Shanghai in 2009, the unexpected appearance of clouds meant they were in the wrong location to be in the path of totality, a mistake Koh attributes to his not paying enough attention to cloud data.

In the beginning, Tay was not as keen as her husband was.

He says: “I always go for the eclipse, while my wife goes for the travel aspects. She suffers five minutes for two weeks, while I suffer two weeks of travelling for the five minutes an eclipse might take.

“I don’t think there’s a single eclipse I can go to without her. She’s the organiser.”

Tay says part of the attraction is that their interest takes them to places they would not ordinarily think of going to. When they travelled to Easter Island, a Chilean territory in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean, for a total solar eclipse in 2010, they also visited Machu Picchu, the famous 15th-century Incan fortress in Peru. Husband and wife also travel frequently outside of eclipse season.

Framing their jaunts as vacations, with eclipses thrown in, was how the couple “got the rest of the family involved”, she adds.

Inter-generational project

Jared, a 37-year-old manager in the public healthcare sector, is the first of the “second-generation eclipse chasers”, he says.

As a teenager, his parents’ exotic hobby was “completely off the radar” for him. In 2012, at the age of 23, however, he found himself with a stack of unused leave days and signed up for a 21-day South Pacific cruise with his parents.

The total solar eclipse viewed on deck in the ocean was part of his “holiday of a lifetime” as he and fellow passengers visited locales like Hawaii, American Samoa, Fiji and New Zealand.

He has since seen three other eclipses with his parents, and his brothers Jordon, 35, and Justin, 32, have also come on board.

Justin Koh even proposed to his now-wife, Faith See, 28, during his second eclipse shortly after the darkness lifted. It took place on a family cruise holiday to Exmouth, Western Australia, in 2023.

He says: “Watching an eclipse feels existential, otherworldly. It’s a very difficult experience to put into words. It feels eerie, like the world is going to end, but it’s completely natural. I will always remember watching Faith experience it because the awe and amazement were being reflected back to me.”

Eclipse chasing has “turned into a family event”, he adds. “It’s also a commitment – ‘I will make time for you.’ Since the planning is done more than a year in advance, the anticipation is just as much fun as the trip,” says Justin, who works in cybersecurity in the banking sector.

He and his wife, Jared and their parents will be joined by friends and members of their extended family on the cruise to view the Aug 12 eclipse, which departs from Southampton in Britain. The trip will cost them between $5,000 and $7,000 each, depending on flight costs from different parts of the world.

From PowerPoint to book

Over drinks at the end of 2025, Jared and his dad came up with the idea of writing a book together to share their knowledge of eclipses with the newbies on their upcoming cruise.

Jared, whose job includes talent development and leadership training, had already self-published a book on Amazon in 2025, titled The Leadership Ladder: Ready To Lead, which is a guide on early career progression.

Besides, he says, he accompanies his father as the designated “PowerPoint clicker” when the elder Koh does occasional presentations on eclipses to polytechnic and junior college students who take astronomy as their co-curricular activity at school.

Chasing Totality: The Complete Handbook For The 2026 Total Solar Eclipse, was published in June. It is available on Amazon at $28.24 in paperback.

The book provides scientific and technical information, including the use of eclipse glasses, cameras, telescopes, drones and video equipment. It also delves into the mental and emotional aspects of eclipse chasing, such as the “paradox of duration”, where months spent planning a trip culminate in minutes of totality.

Koh Joo Beng says: “It goes by so fast that there is no time to look at your camera. You can only see if you’ve taken the photos properly after the eclipse.”

Before embarking on his 15th trip, he admits to being “a bit jaded”.

“Now I’m more into outreach and spreading the joy of chasing eclipses,” he says.