Friday was solar eclipse day. Viewed from home this wasn’t a total eclipse but it was pretty close. Of course all the warnings were in force regarding photographing and viewing the event. The details and timing of the eclipse in Ossett were as shown in this screen grab below.
I've grabbed the details from this web site timeanddate.com which lists details of future solar and lunar eclipse for various UK locations. I've heard all sorts of dates mentioned about our next solar eclipse but this web site lists them all together with a little diagram of partiality.
So for the big event there was lots of cloud about in Ossett. We had a few very tiny patches of blue sky but these weren't anywhere near the position of the sun. As the eclipse started the sun was covered by light cloud and to be honest those casual glances upwards that we weren't suppose to make revealed very little appearing to take place.
We watched a bit of coverage on TV and had another forbidden look out of the window and there was no change. It still looked sunny behind the fairly light cloud. Darker clouds crossed the sun and surprisingly enough it got a little bit gloomier outside. At this point we decided to give up on the event. The TV was turned off and I headed outside and up to the greenhouse.
That was when I spotted it. The cloud cover was thick enough to allow a view of the sun but not thick enough to obscure the sun altogether. It was only a fleeting view before the sun disappeared behind the clouds.
Out of interest I've included my weather stations temperature and solar radiation reading below for Friday morning.
Intriguingly there’s a dip in both temperature and solar radiation at about the time of the eclipse. I've no idea whether that’s due to the eclipse or the vastly varying amounts of cloud we had through the morning.
The next solar eclipse in Wakefield will be visible on 21 August 2017 but will only cover a very small part of the sun. The next eclipse of similar coverage is 23 September 2090. I’m not adding it into my diary.
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At least you got to see something.. we had think cloud and saw nothing.. just a slight darkening for a little while.
ReplyDeleteWe were very lucky to spot it. Just the right amount of cloud cover to see it.
DeleteWhat a fantastic photo. You had a much better view of it than me. We had sun, but no solar eclipse viewing glasses.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't have any glasses so when the sun was brighter we couldn't see anything either.
DeleteI was on the allotment Friday morning and we had solid cloud covering the whole sky so there was absolutely nothing to see, except it was very dark and the reduced temperature was very noticeable.
ReplyDeleteStarted off too bright here so we'd given up on seeing anything at all. Then the cloud arrived. We had a couple of minutes when we could see the eclipse.
DeleteI was driving back north from Oxfordshire and over my right shoulder saw glimpses of the sun beginning to be covered.Went through mist patches then as the clouds cleared I stopped at Warwick Services at 9.30 and there were lots of people watching outside.
ReplyDeleteI did'nt have suitable glasses but got a good view of the maximum cover by looking up through the smoked glass canopy just outside the main entrance!
Good how such an event can capture people's imagination,real reality for once.