When the Sun, Earth and Moon are lined up, which happens on a few occasions every year, one body partly or wholly shuts off the sunlight to the other, causing an eclipse.

The 1999 eclipse is the first total eclipse of the Sun over the UK mainland for 90 years. The last was on June 29th 1927, and totality was only seen over a strip of land about 30 miles wide.

On 23rd September 2090 there will be the next total eclipse over England. The path of its totality will be around 180 miles wide and it starts just before sunset over south western Ireland, south western England and the Channel Islands