Dark of the Sun

For one miraculous instance I saw the almost totally eclipsed sun at 9:50am on Friday March 20.



To give you an idea: this photo is not from March 20, 2015,
but this is just about what I saw.

A large group of us had been standing for some time outside Cluny, which is on high ground, looking hopefully south eastward into great banks of cloud behind which we knew the sun was lurking.  We could see its faint glow and a great deal of dispersed light. At the height of the eclipse, which was around 95% here, the light dimmed no more than as if a dark cloud had intervened, and we thought that was all we’d see. But we stayed, gazing upwards, and a sudden brief parting of the clouds revealed for a single instance the glory of the obscured sun, the dark disc of the moonshadow beginning to slide away across the face of Helios.

In that brief glimpse I saw the diamond ring effect, which exists because the surface of the moon, and thus its shadow,  is irregular and therefore does not blot out all the light of the sun simultaneously.

It was a special moment in a special place!

 

Here are a couple of links for more on Friday's eclipse:

http://uk.businessinsider.com/video-of-fridays-solar-eclipse-2015-2015-3?r=US

http://mashable.com/2015/03/20/the-solar-eclipse-in-photos/