Solar eclipse this evening.

[FFSItsTooHot]

Who's going to be watching the solar eclipse this evening? I hope it's better than the last one back in 1999. That was a total non- event!

We were in the Yorkshire dales and it went a bit quiet, colder and darker. Not as dramatic as I thought really. Went back to normal fairly quickly. It was a bit over hyped.

In Nottingham, few people in local small park, we had a home made pinhole thing, people with colanders couldn’t get anything so shared it around and then a couple who both had glasses were sharing them around so got to look at it directly. We took a photo of this guys photo, there was a young lad playing a guitar, very nice atmosphere.

So he was expected to get 95% rather than totality? If that's what was expected that's what will ha happened. There's a big difference between even 95% and totality. Just 5% of the sun showing is still pretty bright. The photo I took just shows bright sunshine, but from my colander projection it was clearly mostly covered as there was only a crescent of light.

True, London was 91% and it’s not near totality, still quite bright.

It didn’t bypass us in Heacham…

We're in south Hampshire and walked just over a mile up a massive hill in the countryside to so we could watch while having a picnic. It was so hot that we sat under umbrellas in our camping chairs waiting for it to start.
We had a beautiful clear sky and watched the whole eclipse with approx 95% coverage. It was spectacular and we felt the temperature drop really nicely so it was actually quite comfortable. We waited until the final bit disappeared, packed up and then had a mad dash back down the massive hill carrying chairs, huge brollies, blanket and picnic basket before sun set because we didn't want fall down any rabbit holes in the twilight or dark 😆

The last one in 1999 was cloud covered here so we barely noticed it. We were at a zoo and it was weird when all the animals went silent as it darkened.
Fabulous evening though!

Colander eclipse!

I didn't get a good image of the eclipse, but got a little crescent reflection like laurie. I thought the cloud above it was quite odd. There were lots of people gathered, and for a minute thought we might have a "come down to us" moment 😂

Pics

Same in my bit of Berkshire. The sky went a kind of greyish blue, dusk levels of dark, by which I mean not dark at all. Birds were still singing. There was a breeze so it was slightly cooler. But overall, had I not known there was an eclipse I would have just thought it was getting dark slightly earlier than expected.

Doesn't matter either way to me but must admit I find some of the eclipse 'dark' photos supposedly taken in the UK hard to believe. Considering what I've been reading /hearing and wonder if some are photo shot or altered for effect. As it seems Spain got the best of it.

I'm having a bit of a ? as well.

We're somewhere much closer to where there was totality than anywhere in the UK.

At max coverage, (we got 98-99%) there was a tiny sliver of the Sun's disk visible and OK, yes, it got slightly dark for about 5 minutes, but no more so than on a overcast evening, then it brightened up again.

If we hadn't known about the event and been looking for it/at it we'd probably not have noticed.

My son always gets better pictures of anything like this than I do. Because he has a better camera and knows which settings to use. Whereas I "point and click" and hope for the best. So I guess some of the really good photos might be for similar reasons.

We had 95% coverage and the photos I took with the eclipse glasses over the lens look like it's totally blacked.
So not faked, but with assistance!
Picture with eclipse glasses and without.

I'm sure it was possible to make it look dark (I've done that more than once in photographs by accident😳) but the eclipse simply can't have lowered brightness levels to the point it got dark in the UK....so I'm sure there are nice images out there, and that's great, but they maybe set unrealistic expectations for next time around or make people feel they were watching in the wrong way or from the wrong place last night.

In any event there was some odd stuff floating around yesterday evening, including a poster in the UK who was very dismissive of what they had seen (note past tense)...problem was they posted around half an hour before the start of the event could be seen from anywhere in the UK....

I do think some in the MSM made such a fuss about this that there was a lot of preloading of expectations.....

Yep we are in Spain
under clear skies yesterday
100% totality and completely worth the journey

As others have pointed out
Totality is something complete different to even 99%, uk got between 90-95% which is still fun but it doesn’t go dark, you can’t see corona, anything under 100% is partial

I used the eclipse glasses as a filter over my camera so that I didn’t burn out the camera. And so that I could actually show the eclipse. As you’ll see from other photos and comments, you couldn’t actually see the eclipse properly without the filter or glasses, it just looked like an orange blob.

The sky didn’t go dark - it’s amazing how much light even a 90% obscured sun can still throw…

Same here. My camera roll on my phone is full of terrible looking photos where the glasses weren't lined up correctly so the cardboard bit was halfway across the photo, or it's blurry cause my hand wasn't still, or I hadn't managed to line them up with the sun. I've got about 6 semi decent photos out of 30!

FWIW I've finally sorted out images I took last night and this was taken maximum eclipse for us (well south of the UK,) but it need a fixed SLR 300mm lens with mylar filter on the front to do it..

Even with this little sun showing it never got dark,.just dim.

(Waits for image approval)

I'm surprised so many people’s didn’t notice anything much. I'm in the SE and viewed it through my home-made pinhole camera. I could clearly see the advancing 'bites' out of the sun until only a sliver remained. The change in light level was really noticeable and quite eerie - like an unexpected twilight. And it suddenly became a lot cooler. I'm pleased I saw it as I definitely won’t be around for the next one!

Thank you for posting your photo. That's exactly how it looked from where I was, at Jersey Airport. I was using eclipse glasses and couldn't work out how to take a photo. We had 94.3% coverage and it was so beautiful. I'm so glad that I witnessed it, as there will not be another one as big as this one in my lifetime.

In 1999 I was in Cornwall, within the path of totality, but unfortunately it was cloudy and raining. So, although it did go dark (and that was interesting) it wasn't beautiful because I couldn't see any of it.