Solar eclipse visible this Friday

Tomorrow morning the skies over the south will darken as the moon covers the sun during the Solar Eclipse. Yes safely of course, people wearing special glasses or using pin cameras stop what they are doing to see the event - the first for 16 years.

We must stress you must not look at the Sun with the naked eye - and even sun glasses are not enough to protect you. In our part of the world we can expect around 85% of the sun to be obscured - weather permitting - but for some people that's not enough.

So called Eclipse Chasers - many from our region are heading to the Faroe Islands - so they can see a Total eclipse. Our reporter Mike Pearse, is with them and sends this report.

A solar eclipse that darkened Britain's skies 530 years ago might have been seen as an ill omen by King Richard III - and with good reason. The event coincided with the death of his wife, Anne Neville - and five months later the last Plantagenet king was also dead, famously killed at the Battle of Bosworth.

But although accounts of the battle attach significance to the eclipse, experts believe the portent of doom references may have been added in hindsight. Historian and former University of Leicester lecturer David Baldwin, who first suggested that King Richard's remains might lie beneath the beneath the Grey Friars car park in Leicester, where they were found in 2012, said:

"The Croyland Chronicler says only that there was a great eclipse of the sun on the day Queen Anne Neville died - he does not suggest that it boded ill for her husband. Polydore Vergil doesn't mention it at all. I suspect that it's a case of someone being wise after the event when Richard had actually been killed."