On Tuesday the 12th of August we had a nearly full eclipse, where the sun was hidden by the moon. In the west of England, on the border to Wales it was expected to be a 92-93% coverage of the sun, so the family set out for a picnic to observe the event. Lynch Court is situated in the valley of river Arrow, so we ventured to a hill nearby.
We will have to wait until 2090 for the next full solar eclipse in the UK and the next deep partial eclipse will take place in 2050 and that will only be around 80%. So it was a moment to look forward to and the family prepared by visiting the hills of our friend Zigi at Hinton Manor overlooking Eardisland and Shobdon. Unfortunately Zigi had to be in London, but we were prepared with blankets, a bottle of prosecco and a picnic in the typical understated version of Jennifer’s, while we waited for the darkness to encapsule us as we toasted the sun, the moon, our friends and – of course – ourselves.
Unfortunately we had some clouds and haze in the sky due to the extremely hot weather, but that helped to create another interesting phenomena: the Jacob’s Ladder. A Jacob’s Ladder is visible shafts of light shining through gaps in the clouds. The light beams look like a ladder from the sky to the ground like Jacob’s Ladder in the Bible (Genesis). When haze or dust or water particles catch the sun rays shining through the clouds, they make the light paths glow, creating the shining light areas of the fan the spreads out from the sun. And the darker areas of the fan are clouds hiding the sun rays. In our case, the effect was actually helped by the smoke from wild fires in Wales not very far from us. The very dry summer sadly caused wild fires, but the smoke particles strengthened the effect of the sun rays and added more orange colour to the sky.
The rays look like they are fanned out but the light rays are actually parallel to each other. It is only the perspective that makes them look like a fan. But sometimes the scientific explanation deters from the romance of observing a ladder to Heaven, so we were all dreaming of climbing up the ladder.
The eclipse lasted around 2 hours, from just after 6 pm to just after 8 pm with the maxim reached around 19:11. Unfortunately, during the extreme maximum, some of those clouds covered the sun and moon and I couldn’t catch the fullest eclipse. But we could follow it as it approached its peak and again, when the moon moved away from covering the sun.
