It is an annular eclipse where the sun is obscured by a shadow of the moon.
This occurs when the sun, moon and Earth are aligned.
This alignment coincided with a new moon which indicates when the Moon is closest to the ecliptic plane- the imaginary path containing Earth's orbit around the sun.
The eclipse caused the sun to appear as a very bright ring, or annulus, in a phenomenon dubbed as the "ring of fire".
However, observers in the UK and Ireland saw a crescent sun instead of a ring, as this will be a partial eclipse.