Partial solar eclipse draws crowds across UK
A partial solar eclipse drew crowds outside across the UK, with part of the Sun obscured by the Moon between 10am and noon on Saturday.
The phenomenon, which occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, peaked in London at 11am.
Because the star, the planet and its satellite are not perfectly aligned, only part of the Sun is obscured in such an eclipse.
Speaking from Lewes in Sussex, at around 11am, Robert Massey, deputy executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society, said: 'There's a really nice crowd of people, everybody's really excited, there's people wearing eclipse glasses, looking through the telescopes we've got set up.
'We're loving it and it's a lot of fun. It's a great public atmosphere, it's a really nice event. There's a huge amount of enthusiasm about it.'
He added: 'As expected, the Moon started moving in front of the Sun about an hour ago; it's got a bit under an hour to go and it's blocking out some of the Sun.'
He added: 'It's not like the landscape or the light looks different if you're not looking at the eclipse, but if you're looking through a telescope then you see this really obvious bite.
'One of my colleagues here has a colander and through that, you can see little pinholes of the Sun with the bite out of it as well.
'I think you could guess it's running into the tens of thousands watching with events like this, there's local astronomy groups across the UK who are doing it.'
Imo Bell, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: 'There's been nothing unexpected, but that's the cool thing, we've known this has been coming for a very long time.
'We have the technology and the understanding of space now to predict these things almost to the second.'
Speaking at 11.13am from Oxford it said he was watching 'with thousands of people' and the eclipse had 'reached a bit more than 30 per cent obscurity of the Sun' at that time.
He added: 'I've heard a lot of people in the UK where they have higher obscurity have bad cloud coverage, though. If you've got good weather, you're pretty lucky.'
The Met Office said earlier on Saturday that southern and eastern areas of the UK would have the best viewing conditions, with cloudier skies in the North and West.
The next partial solar eclipse visible in the UK will be in August 2026, and is expected to reach 90 per cent obscurity.
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