What does a Solar Eclipse look like?

With perfect predictability, the Great British Weather always manages to spoil any great cosmic event. If you wonder ‘what does a solar eclipse look like’, we did manage to catch the eeriness of one partial darkening of the sky in 2015.

The last partial solar eclipse was on 20 March 2015. With great anticipation we went out onto the seafront here at Cleveleys to watch the event.

It happened in the morning and unfortunately it was a fairly cloudy day so the view wasn’t spectacular. That time it was an 80% eclipse here in the UK. There was a strange eerie quietness about everything, and the sky went a funny colour. A very unusual experience, despite the cloudiness.

It’s Written in the Stars…

On this day, three things happened in the heavens.

• During daylight, a solar eclipse, 
• At night we could see the supermoon,
• And it was the Spring equinox.

Supermoon

Over the previous twelve months to 20.3.15, the moon had been in it’s closest orbit to earth, causing some unusually high tides since the previous September.

In doing it’s closest fly-past the earth, the moon looks bigger than normal hence it’s dubbed a ‘supermoon‘. For sky-gazers and photographers alike it provides some really attractive sights. There are between three and six supermoons in any given year – and in 2015 there were six.

Spring Equinox

Friday 20.3.15 was also the Spring equinox. This marks the day when there are equal hours of daylight and darkness, and heralds the approach of Spring proper and the warmer months of summer.

Other than sitting with a stopwatch, the equinox isn’t something which you can ‘see’ as being any different in appearance to any other normal day. But it’s a marker in the calendar – a day which is celebrated as a day of rebirth.

However, it’s very rare for these three things to happen at the same time.

Solar Eclipse on 20 March 2015

The eclipse on 20.3.15 started from about 8.30am when the moon slowly started to pass in front of the sun over the course of about an hour. It took about another hour for things to return to normal.

The most complete view of the eclipse was at 9.30am and depending on where you are in the UK you saw different amounts of coverage – assuming of course that the sky isn’t covered in cloud, in which case it will feel cooler and go very dull.

So What does a Solar Eclipse Look Like?

Here it is… the eclipse captured live at 9.25am on Friday 20 March 2015 in Cleveleys, right here on the Fylde Coast. Don’t get too excited…

For most of the morning, thick cloud cover made it look like this:

It didn’t go as dark as expected but felt like a cold, dull day in the middle of winter. The street lights didn’t come on either, although the seagulls were squawking as if they weren’t keen on the experience!

Have a look at this video clip –

The next Solar Eclipse…

The next chance to see a good partial solar eclipse here in the UK is on 12 August 2026. It will be a 90% coverage all across the UK – so save the date.

It’s likely that most of us won’t be here for the next total eclipse in the UK – it’s on 23 September 2090… !

Total Solar Eclipse in the USA

On Monday 21 August 2017 a total solar eclipse happened over the United States. It was visible in other countries as a partial eclipse. We caught some of this strange experience here, right over the Fylde Coast.

Here on the north west coast we were all primed for the event. Ireland, Scotland, Iceland and the Azores would see it from beginning to end – if the weather co-operated! In the UK, the eclipse started just after 7.30pm, peaking at about 8pm. 

Because we see sunset to it’s bitter end and beyond, here on the Fylde coast we’d get a reasonable view – IF it wasn’t cloudy. Throughout the rest of the UK, sunset would happen before the end of the eclipse.

The last time that America had a total eclipse like this was on June 8, 1918. It was most visible in 11 US states – including Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

NASA produced this map which shows the path of the total eclipse, and it was streamed live at the time on the NASA website.

Chaos in America

America expected the event to cause an influx of tourists in the places where it would be most visible, including prime viewing spots in the West of Missouri, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon etc, with an increased demand in portable toilets and hospital beds alike, as people sustain retinal burns caused by looking at it without proper eclipse eye protection.

It obviously caused a drop in generation of solar power too – all the things that you never think of for the ten minutes that you spend gazing at the sky!

On 20 June the US Postal Service even issued a comemorative stamp with a heat sensitive coating that reveals an image of the full moon.

What is a Solar Eclipse?

A solar eclipse – is where the moon lines up between the earth and the sun, to momentarily block out the sun and its light.

The moon orbits the earth much closer than the sun. So even though it is a lot smaller than the sun, their relative distances apart make them appear the same size from earth. When the moon passes between the sun and earth it appears to cover it up perfectly.

It’s a bit like holding The Blackpool Tower between your thumb and finger when you take a photo from the pier!

If you’re in the right place at the right time, the sky will darken. It turns cooler as the moon obscures the sun from view. How obvious the eclipse is won’t just depend on whether you are in the path of it. It’s also affected by how much cloud cover there is on the day.

Solar Eclipse – Safety First!

DO NOT:

• Look straight at the sun with the naked eye even during the eclipse – it can cause permanent eye damage and even blindness.
  Solar burns to the retina are not painful and the loss of vision is not always immediate but can take hours or days to develop and there is no treatment for it.
• Use binoculars or a telescope, or view it through a camera lens.
• View the eclipse through smoked glass, stacked sunglasses, polarised shades or photographic filters.

DO:

• Wear special eclipse viewing glasses – not ordinary sunglasses. 
  Eclipse glasses are made from safe solar filter materials similar to the eye protection worn by arc welders that have a rating of 14 or higher. These can be bought online from a trusted source.
• Make a simple pinhole camera to project the image of the sun onto a blank sheet of paper.
  Get two pieces of white card; poke a small hole in one piece of card using a compass or something sharp. Stand with your back to the sun, holding both cards up, with the one with the pinhole nearest to you.
  The light through the pinhole will be projected onto the second piece of card, allowing the eclipse to be viewed safely. Never look through the pinhole at the sun, only at the projected image.

Find out More

If you’re interested in all the science behind a solar eclipse, have a read at the page about it on Wikipedia, here.

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