I FOUND your Page Three news page very useful - a date with darkness.

I walked up to the top of Accrington Coppice for the eclipse and viewed it from there.

First, a little ginger sort of rust-coloured puppy barked at me. I used the approved solar viewer I had paid £1 for. I tried with two cards, but was unable to use them. The viewer was great.

I was disappointed because I expected the sky to go like night - dark for two minutes. That didn't happen.

Perhaps there was not much to see, but two balls really, the gold was the sun, the black the moon.

Perhaps the really exciting bit was when you saw the moon going over the sun. By the time I had walked home there was still a little bit of the moon eating out of the top right-hand corner of the sun.

I found both the approved solar viewer and your Page Three news excellent help. I don't know much about astronomy, but this was the first eclipse I have ever seen and I expect it will be my last- I'm 51 years old

ADRIAN GRADY, Lemonius Street, Accrington.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.