There are many way to "capture the event". It helps to decide what on aspect of the event one wishes to use to describe the entirety. That will then determine how one approaches the subject/event. Multiple exposures, one long exposure, with or without the sun in the image, and so forth.

Decide what you want the image to look like, then work on the way to achieve that image. Of course, technical challenges may alter your original vision and there may have to be feed-back between the creative and technical aspects to decide on what the final image will look like.

I photographed a lunar eclispe -- one exposure every 10 minutes (8x10, 300mm -- perfect to get the whole show on one piece of film). Two or three hours or so from full moon to full moon. Everything worked perfectly except I did not increase the exposure as the portion of the moon lit up decreased. By keeping the same exposure, I underexposed the moon badly during half of the eclipse...did not show up on the film. But it was a wonderful experience. Just goes to show that some planning and research is not a bad thing!

The last partial solar eclispe we had, I photographed the side of my house (Rolleiflex) -- the plum tree's shadow was thrown there and the shadow was a bunch of partial solar eclipses. Pretty neat.