East Anglian skygazers treated to rare partial solar eclipse phenomenon

Skygazers across East Anglia were treated to a rare phenomenon on Thursday, as a partial solar eclipse appeared just after 10am.

People across eastern and central areas were treated to this special phenomenon in places where there was glimpses of the sun through the clouds.

• When was the solar eclipse?

The phenomenon occured on Thursday morning. Dr Emily Drabek-Maunder, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said the spectacle started at 10.08am in the UK.

The maximum eclipse will occured at 11.13am, when the Moon covered close to one-third of the sun. The partial eclipse ended at 12.22pm.

• Who saw the eclipse?

The satellite picture at 11am shows quite a few of us across the UK saw the partial solar eclipse, which was spotted during breaks in the cloud.

Social media platforms also came to life with the hashtag #solareclipse.

Many of us across the Anglia region also saw the eclipse.

• What causes an eclipse?

An annular eclipse occurs when the sun and moon are exactly in line with the Earth, but the apparent size of the moon is smaller than that of the sun.

The sun will appear as a very bright ring, or annulus, in a phenomenon dubbed as the “ring of fire”. This happened today in the Arctic circle.

However, here is the UK, we saw a partial eclipse where one third of the sun was covered.

• Where else could you see the eclipse?

The eclipse was enjoyed across other parts of the northern hemisphere.