The Sun is eclipsed Moon and clouds … that spoil the party – the Obs

Longyearbyen (AFP) – The Moon nibbled the Sun Friday during a solar eclipse often marred by bad weather and that only a select few were able to admire in its entirety from a remote archipelago in the Arctic, or the seat of a plane.

Many of those who hoped to see the moon partially mask the Sun saw their disappointed expectations due to poor weather in many places.

The eclipse was promised to the people living in Europe, in the northwest of Africa and Asia, and the Middle East, but it is often the clouds, not the moon, which obscured the Sun

Social networks are packed for this appointment astral largely missed. more or less masterful pictures made for at jokes frustrated observers

“Between two clouds is an eclipse … eclipsing” let go a French visitor, Haude Giret, Twitter. “OK, that’s it. Hopefully, the next time a new eclipse will occur in Britain, we are all dead,” added the Briton Mark Wallace.

In London, where occultation was announced at 84%, about 500 people gathered in Regent’s Park, some with sophisticated telescopes other rudimentary utensils homemade. A friendly policeman also lent goggles to improvident.

But the weather has largely spoiled the party. Same in France, where the eclipse was visible in the northeast of the country, and Spain.

A few privileged scientists and amateurs were able to escape the vagaries of weather by embarking on board aircraft that flew above the cloud layers to allow their passengers to admire the “Black Sun”.

By means of several hundred dollars each, 50 Danes and boarded d a Boeing 737 specially chartered for the occasion.

there also some disadvantages.

“If you’re on the ground, you can hear the birds behave differently and feel the temperature fall “, told AFP a passenger, Valentin Mikkelsen, before the flight. “And maybe we will not see everything, because the windows are small,” he told the teacher of 63 years

-. Great show in the Arctic –

For the tenth time since the turn of the century, the solar eclipse was total but only from very remote areas of the planet: the Faroe Islands, enthroned Danish territory north of the UK, and Svalbard (Spitzbergen) Norwegian archipelago lost in the Arctic.

Thousands of eclipse hunters, sometimes from the Antipodes, it was given an appointment.

In the Svalbard archipelago out just four months of polar night, the attack – not serious – a Czech tourist in a Thursday polar bear did not deter the curious who the show was over

. from -18 ° C temperatures, visitors and residents believed saw the sun completely disappear behind the Moon for about two and a half minutes

A total solar eclipse is a matter of distance and alignment.: it is necessary that the moon comes between the Earth and the Sun in a perfect axis and sufficiently close to our planet than the apparent diameter of our satellite exceeds that of the Sun in order to hide the full.

By pure coincidence, the eclipse coincided with the spring equinox, when the Sun returns to the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere, and with the “Super Moon”, when the Moon is both full and closer to the Earth (perigee).

Also because of the alignment Earth-Moon-Sun, the eclipse will be followed by high tides Saturday on the shores of the Atlantic, the English Channel and the North Sea.

For the next total solar eclipse, Europe will have to wait 12 August, 2026.