A Total Solar Eclipse in parts of Europe Today

Missing a rendezvous in Spain! 

 

A total solar eclipse is the most spectacular celestial phenomenon that earth-bound humans can behold

— Mabel Loomis Todd

A total solar eclipse, one of the grandest spectacles of nature, is due to take place today (12Aug26), and visible in parts of Europe* as shown in the map above.  I had planned to view it from somewhere on the plains of Spain, but it has been a vain hope.  I am missing my rendezvous because my body is not willing, though my mind is.   

[* Here is a partial list of global online livestreams where the eclipse can be watched in real time, beginning around 9 pm IST:

• ESA: https://www.youtube.com/live/DRDx2xDR8NA
• NASA: https://www.youtube.com/live/rSvCuSQhC3w
• Exploratorium: https://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/livestream
• Timeanddate: https://www.timeanddate.com/live/eclipse-solar-2026-august-12
• Leon, Spain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXP47SHgq3M ]

[Caution: Contrary to popular media (mis)information, this eclipse will not be visible in India, or anywhere in Asia]

Solar Eclipses

Before dwelling on the topic of the day, let me review what solar eclipses are. The following text is adapted from one of my earliest blog articles on eclipses (see here): 

Eclipses of the Sun and the Moon as viewed from any place on Earth are possible only because of a fortuitous and accidental circumstance associated with the Sun and the Moon. While the Sun is about four hundred times bigger than the Moon, it is also nearly as many times farther away from the Earth as is the Moon. Therefore, they appear to be of nearly the same apparent size (about 0.5 degree in angular diameter) as seen from the Earth. On the occasions when these three bodies are nearly in a line, solar or lunar eclipses, which may be partial or total, are possible. A partial solar eclipse results when the lunar disk hides only a portion of the solar disk on a new moon day. A total solar eclipse happens when the lunar disk is slightly larger than the solar disk and blots it out of sight from the earth at the viewing site, revealing the spectacular sight of the solar corona, which can be viewed with the naked eye. An Annular Eclipse results if the lunar disk is slightly smaller than the solar disk and a thin peripheral ring of the Sun can still be seen at maximum eclipse. 

Total and annular solar eclipses are extremely rare events at any specific place on earth and last only a few minutes at most.  For the duration of a total solar eclipse, day turns nearly into night and produces some breathtakingly beautiful effects.

With reference to the diagram below, total and annular eclipses are possible at locations in the umbral and antumbral shadow regions, and partial ones outside of them, in the penumbral shadow regions.

[From nineplanets.org]

Total Solar Eclipse of Today (12Aug26)

A total solar eclipse will occur at the Moon's descending node of orbit later today with a magnitude of 1.0386. This is happening about 2.2 days after perigee (on August 10, 2026, at 12:15 UTC).

Below is an animation showing the umbral (thick central) and penumbral shadows of the Moon sweeping over the region later today. A total eclipse will be visible at all points lying on the umbral shadow region. The penumbral region will experience partial eclipse to varying degrees.

The total eclipse will pass over the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, Atlantic Ocean, northern Spain and extreme northeastern Portugal (see map below). The point of greatest duration will be just 45 km off the western coast of Iceland (65°10' N and 25°12' W), where the totality will last 2m 18s. The first part of the total eclipse path will, unusually, pass from east to west from Russia to Greenland, just avoiding the North Pole. A partial eclipse will cover more than 90% of the Sun in Ireland, Great Britain, Portugal, France, Italy, the Balkans and North Africa and to a lesser extent in most of Europe, West Africa and northern North America.

The total eclipse will pass over northern Spain from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean coast (see map below). It will be visible from the cities of A Coruña, Valencia, Zaragoza, Palma and Bilbao, but both Madrid and Barcelona will be just outside the path of totality.

The last total eclipse in continental Europe occurred on March 29, 2006 and in the continental part of European Union on August 11, 1999. The last total solar eclipse in Spain happened on August 30, 1905 and followed a similar path across the country. The next total eclipse visible in Spain will happen less than a year from now, on August 2, 2027, the day that is slated to witness the ‘eclipse of the century’ lasting well over six minutes in some parts of its path further westward along North Africa. More about this in a future blog article.

A superbly informative and interactive Google map of the event is available at:

http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2026_GoogleMapFull.html

One of several favorable locations for observing the event is the historic and architecturally beautiful city of Leon, northwest of Madrid. For the technically inclined, the eclipse parameters at this location are shown in the map below:

The totality at Leon lasts a decent ~100 seconds, and the probability of clear skies in the late evening (looking westward) is quite high. Sunset will occur some time soon after the eclipse, thus producing an eerie effect. This should give an indication of how much I am really missing!

Tailpiece - A tale of two eclipse chase(r)s

Ten years ago, I had made extensive plans to view the total solar eclipse of 09Mar16, passing over much of a vast stretch of Indonesia, from the northern coastal city of Palu in Central Sulawesi Province.  I had communicated this to the well-known astronomer and former director of the Nehru Planetarium in Bangalore, Dr B S Shylaja, whom I had known and corresponded with for quite some time without actually meeting her face-to-face. This eclipse gave me an unexpected opportunity to meet her for the first time, in a curious way, and on foreign soil!

While holidaying in Jakarta on the way to Palu, I received a message from Dr Shylaja that she had been invited by local organizers in Palangka Raya, located southwest of Palu in Central Kalimantan Province (see map below), to talk about the eclipse and view it with them live.  I gave her some tips about the on-arrival visa process at Jakarta airport and wished her happy viewing before proceeding to Palu. 

The weather outlook in both places was good, and I had a wonderful experience as recounted in one of my earlier blogs (see here). Unfortunately, it was nearly a washout for Dr Shylaja as I later learnt from her message.

Our return flights converged at Jakarta within a span of an hour and this gave me the privilege of receiving her at the airport and spending some edifying time with her despite our sharply differing eclipse experiences. She also shared with me her home-cooked food, something equally welcome for me.  She then boarded a flight back home while I went sometime later on a flight to Singapore.

Now to today’s eclipse.  Almost a year ago, when my mind as well as my body were equally willing, I had mooted the idea of a small group of eclipse enthusiasts joining together and traveling to Leon in Spain to view what would be unfolding later today. I had successfully persuaded Dr Shylaja to join this group. Lo and behold! Now she happens to be the only one from the group stationed at the venue while the others have stayed back home for one reason or another.

Even as I write this, the weather outlook in Leon is extremely good and Dr Shylaja appears to be all set for a reversal of her 2016 experience in Indonesia. It is a matter of hours before I get confirmation from her of a successful viewing. Alas, for me it has already been a reversal of a different kind!

 

Appendix A: An Eclipse Simulator (online)

For sheer visual delight and rich graphic information*, the technically inclined reader may try out this eclipse simulator, preset for Leon, Spain.  

[*Below is a screen grab]

The event is being livestreamed from Leon at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXP47SHgq3M

Appendix B: Totality

For a thoroughly detailed and graphic description of the unique experience of totality, I can do no better than to repeat a quote from Mark Littmann, Fred Espenak and Ken Willcox from their book The Experience of Totality, first published in 2008:

First contact. A tiny nick appears on the western side of the Sun. The eye detects no difference in the amount of sunlight. Nothing but that nick portends anything out of the ordinary. But as the nick becomes a gouge in the face of the Sun, a sense of anticipation begins. This will be no ordinary day.

Still, things proceed leisurely for the first half hour or so, until the Sun is more than half covered. Now, gradually at first, then faster and faster, extraordinary things begin to happen. The sky is still bright, but the blue is a little duller. On the ground around you the light is beginning to diminish. Over the next 10 to 15 minutes, the landscape takes on a steely gray metallic cast.

As the minutes pass, the pace quickens. With about a quarter hour left until totality, the western sky is now darker than the east, regard­less of where the Sun is in the sky. The shadow of the Moon is approaching. Even if you have never seen a total eclipse of the Sun before, you know that something amazing is going to happen, is happening now--and that it is beyond normal human experience.

Less than fifteen minutes until totality. The Sun, a narrowing crescent, is still fiercely bright, but the blueness of the sky has deepened into blue-gray or violet. The darkness of the sky begins to close in around the Sun. The Sun does not fill the heavens with brightness anymore.

Five minutes to totality. The darkness in the west is very noticeable and gathering strength, a dark amorphous form rising upward and spread­ing out along the western horizon. It builds like a massive storm, but in utter silence, with no rumble of distant thunder. And now the darkness begins to float up above the horizon, revealing a yellow or orange twilight beneath. You are already seeing through the Moon's narrow shadow to the resurgent sunlight beyond.

The acceleration of events intensifies. The crescent Sun is now a blazing white sliver, like a welder's torch. The darkening sky continues to close in around the Sun, faster, engulfing it.

Minutes have become seconds. The ends of the bare sliver of the Sun break into individual points of intense white light--Baily's Beads-- the last rays of sunlight passing through the deepest lunar valleys. Opposite the crescent, a ghostly round silhouette looms into view. It is the dark limb of the Moon, framed by a white opalescent glow which creates a halo around the darkened Sun. The corona--the most striking and unexpected of all the features of a total eclipse--is emerging.

Almost instantaneously, the incredibly thin crescent Sun fragments into a series of brilliant beads and short arcs which dwindle and vanish in rapid succession. And now, there is only one bead, set like a single dazzling diamond in a ring."

But its penetrating brilliance rapidly fades as if it were sucked into an abyss.

Totality! 

Where the Sun once stood, there is a black disk in the sky, outlined by the soft pearly white glow of the corona, about the brightness of a Full Moon. Small but vibrant reddish features stand at the eastern rim of the Moon's disk, contrasting vividly with the white of the corona and the black where the Sun is hidden. These are the prominences, giant clouds of hot gas in the Sun's lower atmosphere. They are always a surprise, each unique in shape and size, different yesterday and tomorrow from what they are at this special moment.

You are standing in the shadow of the Moon.

It is dark enough to see Venus and Mercury and whichever of the brightest planets and stars happen to be close to the Sun’s position and above the horizon. But it is not the dark of night. Looking across the landscape at the horizon in all directions, you see beyond the shadow to where the eclipse is not total, an eerie twilight of orange and yellow. From this light beyond the darkness which envelops you comes an inexorable sense that time is limited.

Now, at the midpoint in totality, the corona stands out most clearly, its shape and extent never quite the same from one eclipse to another. And only the eye can do the corona justice, its special pattern of faint wisps and spikes on this day never seen before and never to be seen again.

Yet around you at the horizon is a warning that totality is drawing to an end. The west is brightening while in the east the darkness is deepening and descending toward the horizon. Above you, prominences appear at the western edge of the Moon. The edge brightens.

Suddenly totality is over! A brilliant bead of sunlight appears. This heavenly diamond quickly grows into a band of several jewels which merge together to form the returning crescent Sun. The dark shadow of the Moon silently slips past you and rushes off toward the east.