There was a lot of media hype about this eclipse because it would be about 91 % in London and 93 % in Cardiff.

We went onto the church tower roof in Epsom and had a magnificent view through special Eclipse viewing glasses from about 18:50 to 19:20.  It was a bright, hot day with a cloudless sky, so no risk of any obscuration by clouds, even though the sun was quite low in the western sky, although it was not at all a sunset sky in my location.

We saw the crescent left by the moon’s  shadow move across from about the 10 o’clock position, round the top edge of the moon and down to the 4 o’clock position during this time. Of course, both the sun and the moon are moving in an arc and it wasn’t clear to me which was moving most quickly, although it felt like the sun was moving more quickly.  I think this must be the case, because the moon and the sun both move in an east to west direction (due to the earth’s rotation).

I’ve seen some web sites saying the moon moves across the sun’s disc from right to left (i.e. west to east)  whereas in reality the sun is moving behind the moon from left to right!

Although it was called a ‘deep eclipse’, it did not go anything like dark: indeed cloudy days are often a lot darker. But it was spectacular to watch and I’m delighted to have seen my first real solar eclipse after all these decades.

To add to the thrill of the night sky, later on we saw a lot of shooting stars in the Perseid meteor shower.

Unfortunately neither of these events is easy to photograph without special equipment, and we didn’t want ot spoil the experience of either by struggling instead with technology.