Clouds and light snow hampered a partial solar eclipse in St. John’s yesterday.

Nearly a dozen sky-watchers flocked to the Johnson Geo Centre with telescopes in hand, trying to get a glimpse of the moon passing over the sun.

It’s estimated there was nearly an 82 per cent blockage just before 7 a.m..

Although Mother Nature may have spoiled the viewing, Garry Dymond, the Past President of the Royal Astronomical Society in St. John’s, says he and others enjoyed working on other experiments during the partial eclipse.“What we’ve done is we’ve taken a picture of the sky in the morning and then we’ve made it manually so that you can see how the light changes. Because our eyes change so fast we don’t see the purples and the blues very good because our eyes are fixed for it,” he said

“But on the camera you can actually see. So we’re hoping to see how bright it gets and then how dark it gets.”

Fear not if you missed it says Dymond; there will be other partial eclipses over the next 10 years.