RETIRED scientist Tim Wetherell took this spectacular photograph from his home in Minehead of the weekend’s partial solar eclipse, when the moon blocked some of the sun’s light as it moved between it and the Earth.

Up to half of the sun was covered by the moon at the celestial event’s peak just after 11 am on Saturday (March 29).

The next partial solar eclipse will not be visible in the UK until August next year, while a full solar eclipse will happen in 65 years’ time in September, 2090, the last one being in 1999, when Cornwall experienced the darkness of ‘totality’.

Mr Wetherall, who has had an interest in ‘all things astronomical’ since he was a teenager, took the image through a special solar telescope fitted with safety filters.

He said: “You can also see a large sunspot near the top left edge of the sun.

“These are regions of the surface that are cooler, so appear darker than the rest.

“Sunspots are associated with high levels of solar activity which throw vast quantities of plasma into space.

“It is this plasma that interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere to create the auroras that we have been enjoying recently.

“It is a remarkable coincidence that the sun and the moon appear almost exactly the same size in the sky, making total eclipses possible.

“There are probably hardly any other planets in the entire galaxy that have a moon of the exact size and distance to do this.”

Mr Wetherall said although Saturday’s eclipse was only partial, a ‘cosmic near miss’, it still provided an interesting spectacle for stargazers.

However, Mr Wetherall warned that people must use eclipse glasses or other equipment for safe solar viewing, even during a partial eclipse, because retinal damage and blindness can be caused in just seconds.