Hairbrushes, Colanders and a 91% Eclipse: Partial Solar Eclipse at the Royal Observatory Greenwich - Wednesday 12 August 2026
- Mike Meynell
- 3 days ago
- 10 min read
This was the big one.
We had known for a long time that the partial solar eclipse on Wednesday 12 August was going to be the major event of our solar observing season. What we perhaps hadn't anticipated was quite how big it would become.
There had been plenty to worry about beforehand. Would the weather cooperate? Would strike action affect the opening of the Royal Observatory? Would we have enough volunteers? Would the queues become completely unmanageable? We even had a contingency plan to move everything to Blackheath if the Observatory couldn't open.
In the end, none of that mattered. The Observatory opened, the weather behaved and our volunteers turned out in force.
The day started ridiculously early for Bobby and me, arriving at the Royal Observatory at around 6am for BBC Breakfast. We expected an interview or two. Instead, we were on site for nearly four hours as the BBC broadcast several live segments from Greenwich.
This produced one of the more unexpected moments of my astronomy career.
I had been demonstrating the Sunspotter and needed something to represent the Moon moving across the projected image of the Sun. The BBC reporter's hairbrush happened to be close at hand and, before I really knew what was happening, I was slowly moving it underneath the projection lens to demonstrate the eclipse.
Hairbrush-gate had begun.
Hairbrushes and colanders. The BBC Breakfast team interview Bobby and Mike. Screengrabs by Eddie Cantello and Jane Bezant. Photos by Bobby Manoo.
At one point the reporter actually had to ask me to put the hairbrush down. Meanwhile, the Flamsteed WhatsApp groups were providing a running commentary. Apparently, of all the things people thought I might be doing that morning, waving a hairbrush around on BBC Breakfast wasn't high on anybody's list.
Neither was it on mine.
The other household object making an early appearance was the humble kitchen colander. I demonstrated how the holes act as multiple pinhole projectors during an eclipse, creating dozens of images of the crescent Sun. The resulting BBC clip subsequently seemed to appear all over the internet.
By this stage, I was beginning to think the Flamsteed should establish the Order of the Brush and Colander (OBC), awarded for outstanding services to astronomy using household objects.
After a short break for breakfast, it was back to the Observatory. Tim and Frederik had arrived and preparations for the main event were beginning. Tim soon had his Calcium K rig operating and was already producing excellent views of active regions on the Sun.
ITV arrived next, with Rags Martel interviewing Tim and me about the eclipse and the various ways in which it could be observed safely. Times Radio followed later, along with NBC from the United States, more BBC crews and further ITV coverage.
Tim and Mike on ITV News.
For much of the day, the Royal Observatory resembled a broadcasting studio. Which, for a few hours at least, it pretty much was.
The media interest continued right through the afternoon. Bobby was later interviewed by Sophie Raworth for the BBC News. This provided another entertaining moment when Frederik, who doesn't watch much television, initially failed to recognise her and told her to join the back of the telescope queue. Only when other visitors started asking for selfies did he realise that perhaps an exception could be made.
Bobby being interviewed on BBC News by Sophie Raworth, and all is forgiven for Frederik. Pictures by Eddie Cantello, Frederik Botha and Jane Bezant.
In fairness, Sophie apparently took it extremely well and was genuinely interested in what we were doing. She even noted the Flamsteed website and expressed an interest in joining us at one of our Blackheath observing sessions in the autumn - as a visitor rather than a journalist.
While all this was going on, we still had an eclipse event to organise.
Gradually the remaining Flamsteed volunteers began arriving and the equipment multiplied around the Dolphin Sundial courtyard.
We had five specialist solar telescopes: the museum's Coronado 60mm hydrogen-alpha telescope, Clive's Sky-Watcher 76mm hydrogen-alpha telescope, which I had borrowed while Clive was away, my 40mm Lunt, Frederik's Lunt imaging set-up with camera and screen, and Tim's Calcium K rig.
H-alpha scopes, Smart scopes, Sunspotters, all set up in readiness for the eclipse. Pictures by Jane Bezant and Eddie Cantello.
Alongside those were several smart telescopes, including Seestars, a DWARF 3 and a Vaonis Vespera, three Sunspotters, hundreds of pairs of solar observing glasses and an increasingly impressive collection of pinhole projectors.
And colanders.
Lots of colanders.
One cereal box had also been pressed into service as a pinhole projector, proving that sophisticated astronomical equipment is not always required. Sometimes breakfast packaging will do.
By the official start of our observing session at 4pm, people were already gathering around the equipment. From there, numbers simply continued to build.
By around 6pm, the site was packed.
We had spent a lot of time beforehand thinking about how to manage the queues. With potentially around 1,000 people on site at any one time, there was simply no possibility of allowing several minutes at each telescope. People needed to view, enjoy the sight, and then move on so that somebody else could have their turn.
Les later described his role near the sundial as being rather like a beachmaster:
"Close up, move along, keep the queue moving..."
Repeated approximately forever.
It was relentless.
The strategy with the solar glasses also evolved during the evening. We had hundreds available, but they were not giveaways and needed to keep circulating. Bobby came up with a very effective solution - give the glasses to people while they were queuing for the telescopes, then collect them again after they had finished viewing.
Watching the eclipse around the observatory. Pictures by Jane Bezant and Ed Fosbrook.
That meant people could watch the eclipse developing while they waited, rather than simply standing in a queue.
It also reinforced one of the main messages we had given our volunteers before the event: there was no single "best" way to view the eclipse.
The Sunspotters, solar glasses, smart telescopes, pinhole projectors, Calcium K system and hydrogen-alpha telescopes all showed something slightly different. Visitors didn't need to look through every telescope to experience the event.
That proved particularly important as the crowds grew.
There were plenty of opportunities for conversations while people waited, and some of the questions reminded us why events like this are worthwhile.
Holly spoke to one visitor who believed it was normally perfectly safe to look directly at the Sun and wondered why an eclipse suddenly made it dangerous. Another complained that his eclipse glasses were too dark because he couldn't see anything through them. Holly suggested that he put them back on and actually look towards the Sun.
"Wow!"
His face apparently lit up.
Elsewhere, Jane encountered a grandmother who remembered viewing eclipses using photographic negatives and insisted that "it didn't do us any harm". Her granddaughter's response summed up the passage of time rather neatly:
"What's a film negative?"
Astronomy outreach occasionally makes you feel very old.
At 6.17pm, the eclipse began.
Naturally, this was almost exactly the moment when ITV wanted another live interview.
So, having spent months organising the event, I witnessed first contact while standing in front of an ITV camera.
Surreal doesn't really cover it.
Once the interview finished, I made my way back towards the telescopes. The hydrogen-alpha scopes had been positioned along the fence overlooking the western horizon, giving us a clear view of the Sun as it gradually descended.
There was plenty to see even without the eclipse. Prominences were visible around the solar limb, along with filaments and a couple of sunspots. Tim had also noticed changing activity during the day, including a small flare and the appearance of another sunspot group.
But, increasingly, nobody was looking at the solar activity.
They were watching the Moon.
Bit by bit, the dark lunar disc moved across the face of the Sun.
The kitchen colanders suddenly came into their own. Every hole projected a tiny image of the eclipsed Sun, turning the ground into a pattern of crescents. The cereal-box pinhole projectors did the same thing, while gaps between the leaves of trees produced natural crescent projections all around us.
Some of the simplest demonstrations were producing some of the biggest reactions.
The view through the hydrogen-alpha telescopes was extraordinary. As maximum approached, the visible portion of the Sun became an increasingly thin crescent, with prominences still visible around the edge.
Spectacular views of the eclipse through the telescopes and Sunspotter. Pictures by Frederik Botha, Tim Rickard, Ed Fosbrook and Mike Meynell.
I had positioned myself beside the telescope that Manish was operating, which had the useful advantage that I could sneak another look through the eyepiece whenever there was a gap between visitors.
Purely for quality-control purposes, obviously.
But the solar glasses were every bit as effective for appreciating the eclipse as a whole. Being able to stand back and watch the changing shape of the Sun against the sky was something completely different from the magnified telescope view.
Then the surroundings began to change.
Around ten minutes before maximum, the light levels dropped noticeably.
It wasn't simply darker. The quality of the daylight itself seemed different - strangely flat and almost polarised. Shadows became sharper and the whole landscape took on an unfamiliar appearance.
Then came the birds.
Above the general noise of more than a thousand people around the Observatory, birdsong suddenly seemed to be everywhere. I was standing beside the NBC reporter at the time and she commented that similar changes in bird behaviour were being reported elsewhere.
It was a wonderful backdrop to what was happening overhead.
Maximum eclipse came at 7.13pm, with around 91% of the Sun obscured from Greenwich.
For perhaps the first time all evening, the crowd seemed to become noticeably quieter.
People simply looked.
Through the telescopes, on screens, through eclipse glasses, through pinhole projectors and through kitchen colanders, everyone was watching the same narrow crescent of Sun.
After all the preparation, the emails, the equipment lists, the contingency plans, the volunteer briefings, the media interviews and the queue management, this was the reason we were there.
And it was spectacular.
Then, almost immediately, things began to reverse.
The Moon continued its slow passage across the solar disc and the daylight returned remarkably quickly. This was particularly striking because the Sun itself was getting lower in the western sky, so under normal circumstances the evening should have been becoming progressively darker.
Instead, for a while, everything became brighter.
As the eclipse moved beyond maximum, the atmosphere around the Observatory began to relax as well. The crowds slowly thinned and, for the first time in several hours, the volunteers had a little space to breathe.
By then, we reckoned that at least 1,500 people had been on site during the evening.
The colander method works! And an early contender for an OBC, Miyuki and her pinhole camera box. Pictures by Jane Bezant.
I suspect most managed to see the eclipse through at least one of our telescopes or on one of the screens. Those who didn't still had excellent views using solar glasses, the Sunspotters or the various projection methods.
Considering the numbers involved, that felt like a considerable achievement.
The eclipse continued until just after 8pm. Museum staff had begun clearing the site shortly before then, but the Flamsteed volunteers were able to remain until the end.
There was just time for the traditional group photograph.
Our cheering while the photograph was being taken was apparently loud enough to interrupt a nearby live BBC broadcast.
By that point, nobody cared very much.
We had done what we came to do.
The equipment was packed away and we had several lovely conversations with museum staff and management, who went out of their way to thank the Flamsteed team. Messages received afterwards repeated the same themes - appreciation for the volunteers' expertise, organisation and enthusiasm, particularly given the very crowded and sometimes difficult conditions.
The Front of House team were particularly grateful for the way our volunteers continued talking to visitors, managing the crowds and sharing their knowledge throughout what had been a very long day. Other museum colleagues commented on the strength of the partnership between Flamsteed and the Royal Observatory and how much more we are able to achieve by working together.
That meant a great deal to all of us.
Perhaps the most satisfying feedback, though, came from the visitors themselves.
Paul Merriman attended this time with his family rather than as a volunteer and described the Flamsteed experience as the highlight of their visit. Others contacted us afterwards to thank the volunteers and tell us how much they had enjoyed the event.
That is ultimately what matters.
We can talk about the media coverage - BBC Breakfast, BBC News, ITV, Times Radio, NBC and others - and that was certainly great exposure for the Society.
We can also talk about the hairbrush.
We probably will for some time.
But the important part of the day was what happened between our volunteers and the thousands of people who came to see the eclipse.
Twenty-three Flamsteed volunteers gave their time:
Matthew Ayres, Jane Bezant, Frederik Botha, Eddie Cantello, Adrian Challinor, Helen Edwards, Ed Fosbrook, John Harries, Simon Hurst, Holly Kreider, Bobby Manoo, Katherine Melmoth, Mike Meynell, Manish Patel, Neale Patrick, Tim Rickard, Miyuki Shigeno, Graham Spinks, Leslie Stephens, Richard Summerfield, Trixi Summerfield, Chris Weir and Paul Wright.
Pictures of our volunteers, by Jane Bezant,
Every one of them played a part.
Some operated telescopes. Some managed queues. Some handed out and retrieved solar glasses. Some demonstrated equipment. Some spent hours talking to visitors. Most ended up doing several of those jobs.
Everyone should be extremely proud of what they achieved.
When we eventually left the Observatory, Greenwich Park was still packed with people and the queue of cars trying to leave was biblical.
Bobby, Frederik, Richard and I therefore spent a while standing around talking about everything that had happened. We were exhausted, but still buzzing and swapping stories from the day.
I eventually got home at around 10pm.
Sleep took rather longer.
Meanwhile, several Flamsteed members who had travelled to Spain had experienced the total eclipse and were already sending back some wonderful images, giving us the chance to compare our 91% partial eclipse from Greenwich with the extraordinary sight of totality from inside the eclipse path.
Images of the total eclipse from Spain. Pictures by Alec Knox and Yvonne Jacobs.
It had been a very long day.
At times, a slightly mad one.
There had been hairbrushes, colanders, cereal boxes, television crews, enormous queues, bird song, strange light, 23 volunteers and at least 1,500 visitors.
But above all, there had been an eclipse.
And what an event it was.
Comments