Full report:
Although cloudy, there were signs that it might be breaking, so I went to Portballintrae car park - at 0820 UT the view to the West was as follows:
But to the south east cloud cover was total and it was actually raining lightly.
By 0830 UT it was apparent that the bright patch was moving away
Rain getting heavier, apparently from a sheet of altostratus, this was the view to the north west
with just a bright patch towards the Sun
The rain persisted. By 09:20 UT there were signs of a clearance to the SE
but it never materialised - the rain continued, though it got a bit lighter.
At 09:45 UT I made the decision to abandon Portballintrae and drove inland in the direction of the clearance. Arriving in Derrykeighan there were shadows! There was only a small hole in the thick cloud, and there was still some high cloud, but I stopped & set up the refractor with its objective filter, and managed to quickly snap a single image before the cloud closed in again.
This was taken with 80mm f/6 refractor, Canon 2x tele-extender, Canon 40D, 1/250 sec (at f/12), ISO 400
So ... I just caught the tail end of the eclipse ... glad to hear some of you had better luck!
