The internet today is full of solar eclipse photographs.
Some of the best I’ve seen are not of the sun being eaten by the moon but the mottled crescent-shaped shadows created in the streets, in bedrooms and on furniture.
Here in south west France, we had a great view from the village boulodrome. Folk brought along food to share. Word had clearly got around that this was a good spot. Various groups, mostly French, sat in chairs and on picnic rugs to enjoy the spectacle.
When it came, the special eclipse glasses made it an incredible experience.
There were others using welding masks and goggles, as well as pinhole cameras made out of boxes.
I managed to get the shot below by holding my eclipse glasses over the camera on my phone, early on in the process. Not the best image, but you get the picture.
Unlike in 1999, when the UK had a total eclipse, this one was only partial – about ninety seven or eight per cent for us.
It was humbling to appreciate the sun’s mighty force, even when its battery is drained to the last few percent.
It went a bit darker, but not like in 1999 when the eclipse was in the middle of the day rather than at sunset.
The streetlights didn’t come on this time, nor did the birds suddenly go quiet after coming into roost.
Still, it was shared experience and people in various countries enjoyed this natural phenomenon. Truly awesome, in the absolutely real sense of the word.
Sunset itself was pretty wonderful, too.
And then -much, much later – it wa the turn of the Perseids meteor shower, which was ‘like a movie’ according to one of my friends who just happened to wake at two-thirty in the morning and remembered to go outside and look at the sky.
We saw several shooting stars before we went to bed, but also so many fast-moving satellites, which were never really a part of the night sky when I was a young child in the 1960s.
Anyway, thank you, Sun and Moon, for forgetting your differences and coming together for such a spectacular occasion.
I’m off for a sleep now.
Speak soon.
Love, Maddie x
Maddie Grigg 