For the first time in more than a century, a total solar eclipse will sweep across mainland Spain, with a longer follow-up coming the next summer. The main event will occur Aug. 12, when the sun, moon and Earth align to cast daytime darkness over parts of the Iberian Peninsula, plus small sections of Greenland and Iceland.
The moon’s umbra will begin near the North Pole and race south along a roughly 5,130-mile (8,260-kilometre) track. Totality will last as long as 2 minutes and 18 seconds at its peak — located off Iceland’s west coast — before diminishing to about a minute where the shadow reaches Portugal and the crowded parts of Spain, and finally ending over the Mediterranean.
Hundreds of millions more people outside the path of totality will still see a partial eclipse. The sun will be mostly hidden in locations close to the path: Dublin may experience about 94% coverage and Oslo about 83%. Farther away, coverage falls to roughly 18% in Montreal, 9% in New York and 2% in Norfolk, Virginia. Observers should use certified eclipse glasses any time the sun is not completely covered.
The day will be rich with other celestial sights. Before dawn, six planets will form an arc in the sky; after night falls, the Perseid meteor shower is expected to peak under a new moon, increasing the chance of meteors appearing during or near totality. Some eclipse chasers are also hoping to catch the northern lights during the brief darkness if solar activity produces an auroral display.
Eclipse mapmaker Michael Zeiler plans to join a cruise in a Greenland fjord as a guest lecturer and will point a video camera north during totality in search of any aurora. A significant solar outburst during the eclipse would be an extraordinary bonus for people watching and photographing the event.
Scientific and public viewing plans are widespread. The European Space Agency will host a live webcast from Spain’s Astrophysical Observatory of Javalambre and hold a public celebration in León. NASA and projects such as the Virtual Telescope Project will also provide coverage. ESA officials describe the event as both an important scientific opportunity and a powerful human experience that connects people on Earth with the cosmos.
Two ESA space telescopes will observe the eclipsed sun and its faint corona. Proba-3, a pair of satellites designed to create an artificial eclipse, will not be favorably positioned for full totality as seen from Earth but will attempt before-and-after observations.
U.S. university teams will launch more than 60 high-altitude balloons from Spain and Iceland to measure short-term atmospheric changes, including rapid temperature drops caused by the moon’s shadow. That is fewer than the number flown during the 2024 North American eclipse, when some teams launched roughly 10 times as many. Montana State University’s Angela Des Jardins, who leads a NASA-funded balloon project, notes that while only a couple of minutes of totality is short, it is sufficient to produce measurable atmospheric effects.
Researchers will also deploy airborne and ground-based instruments. Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute will fly on a NASA high-altitude aircraft equipped with four cameras capturing the solar corona in nine wavelengths. By flying at about 460 mph (740 kph) to chase the shadow, the jet will lengthen the time of totality in the air to nearly three minutes. Caspi expects thousands of images from each camera during that interval, providing valuable data despite the eclipse’s brief duration.
More eclipses are on the horizon. On Aug. 2, 2027, an exceptionally long total solar eclipse will cross the southern tip of Spain with up to 6 minutes and 23 seconds of totality, continuing into Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia. Then on Jan. 26, 2028, an annular “ring-of-fire” eclipse will add another dramatic event for Spain.
Mainland Spain has not seen a full total solar eclipse in many decades; one hybrid eclipse that produced only fleeting totality for Spain occurred near the time of the Titanic sinking in 1912, and some historians point to 1905 as the last clear full-eclipse experience for the country.
The Royal Observatory of Belgium’s Andrei Zhukov, involved with the Proba-3 mission, highlights that artificial eclipses produced by spacecraft formation flying have been simulated dozens of times in recent years, with the longest simulated eclipse lasting more than five hours. He and other scientists say they are eager for both natural and engineered eclipses as opportunities to study the sun and its effects on Earth.
Observers planning to watch the Aug. 12 event should prepare with safe viewing equipment, check local viewing times and conditions, and consider participating in public events or scientific outreach programs to make the most of this rare celestial show.