Partial solar eclipse from Kendal…

So, how did we get on watching the partial solar eclipse from Kendal?

Um… not very well. 🙂

It didn’t look good when my alarm went off at 6am and the next thing I heard was rain lashing against the window. That’s not a sound a would-be eclipse watcher wants to hear. But, ever the optimists, Stella and I went up to the Golf club car park just after 8am and met EAS Founder Philip Stobbart there, who was sheltering/cowering under an umbrella against the wind and rain. Of the Sun, there was no sign. In fact, the cloud cover was so heavy that there wasn’t even any hint of a brightening in one part to tell us which was east was…

We all retreated into the car to wait and see if the weather improved. It didn’t. The rain continued, and the sky brightened only grudgingly. Not looking good at all…

Just before 8.30 Martin Lewes, roving reporter for BBC Radio Cumbria, arrived, and we all got out of the car to join him at his broadcast car and prepare to give a live report on what we were seeing – or, rather, what we weren’t seeing…

Local sunrise was due at 08.30, so at that time Stella and Phil posed in front of the rising, eclipsed Sun…

Our rain-soaked, wind-blown outside broadcast went well, and we were able to tell the people of Cumbria what we WOULD have been seeing if the sky was clear… a beautifully eclipsed Sun, rising up from behind the far horizon, looking like a golden-red crescent in the sky… when actually all we could really see was this…

… and that was it, really. We didn’t see a moment of the eclipse. So, in 24 hours we missed a clear sky for our Skywatch, the peak of the Quadrantids meteor shower and a partial solar eclipse. What a BRILLIANT start to the year! 😦

It was the Universe’s way of making us pay for enjoying such a stunning view of that dawn lunar eclipse the other week…

It seems that sightings, and photographs, of the eclipse have been few and far between, as sh lousy weather blanketed most of the UK this morning. But, as luck would have it, EAS Treasurer, David Allan, managed to see the eclipse and photograph it from down south…

You win some, you lose some. Better luck next time! 🙂