West Kent Set for a Rare Evening Solar Eclipse — With a Meteor Shower to Follow

It's worth planning your evening around the sky tonight. A deep partial solar eclipse crosses the UK this evening, with around 90% of the Sun covered by the Moon at its peak from West Kent's vantage point — genuinely rare viewing, even though the total eclipse itself passes the county by. The path of totality only touches Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain, but this is still the first total solar eclipse visible anywhere over mainland Europe since 1999, and the partial version reaching Kent is a striking spectacle in its own right.

Timing matters here: the Moon first starts crossing the Sun at around 6.17pm, with maximum eclipse — and the deepest coverage — between roughly 7.05pm and 7.16pm, before it clears by around 8.06pm. Because it's happening in the early evening rather than around midday, the Sun will already be low over the western horizon throughout, sinking further as the eclipse progresses, so anywhere with an unobstructed view west matters more than usual.

None of this is safe to look at directly, eclipse or not, and that doesn't change just because 90% of the Sun is covered rather than 100% — the remaining sliver is still bright enough to cause permanent eye damage. Certified ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses are the only sensible way to view it directly, and old, scratched or creased glasses from a previous eclipse aren't safe to reuse. For anyone without a proper pair, a pinhole projector, or even the dappled light through gaps in leaves or a colander held up to the ground, will safely show the crescent shape of the eclipse without needing to look anywhere near the Sun itself.

For anywhere with genuine elevation and a clear run to the western sky, West Kent has some decent options. One Tree Hill above Sevenoaks is an established sunset viewpoint with a small car park close by, and Fackenden Down, a Kent Wildlife Trust reserve just north of the town near Otford, sits on a west and south-west facing slope of the North Downs for much the same reason. Over towards Maidstone, the high ground of the North Downs above Hollingbourne offers a similar chalk escarpment outlook across open country to the west. None of these are managed viewing events, so the usual advice applies: stick to established paths, keep well back from any drops, and allow enough daylight to get back to the car safely afterwards.

The forecast is on West Kent's side, too. The Met Office's own guidance for this evening puts "central, southern and eastern parts of England and Wales" — this region included — among the best-placed areas in the country, expecting mostly clear skies through the evening while cloud is more of a risk further north. Conditions can still shift closer to the time, so it's worth checking the live forecast again before heading out, but as things stand West Kent looks better placed than most of the UK to actually see this one.

For anyone prepared to stay up, or set an early alarm, the sky has a second act: the Perseid meteor shower peaks overnight into the early hours of tomorrow, 13 August, with the richest rates expected from around 1am through to just before dawn and a maximum predicted around 3am. This year's peak falls under a new moon, meaning none of the usual moonlight-washout that ruins fainter meteors — from a genuinely dark spot away from town lights, that can mean something close to a meteor a minute, with the theoretical maximum reaching up to 100 an hour under perfect conditions. Between the eclipse this evening and the meteors overnight, it's about as good a stretch for looking up as West Kent gets without leaving the county. Source: Met Office