2026 Total Solar Eclipse: Views from Around the World

Sky-gazers were captivated by the 2026 total solar eclipse, the first to traverse mainland Europe in approximately three decades. On August 12th, for a few fleeting moments, nearly a billion people across Europe, North Africa, North America, and the Arctic witnessed skies darken as the moon precisely aligned with the sun, obscuring its light.

The path of totality, offering the most dramatic views, stretched across northern Russia, Iceland, Greenland, Spain, and parts of Portugal. Observers within this path experienced a profound shift as a false twilight descended before the moon fully concealed the sun.

Scientific American contributor and avid eclipse chaser Lucie McCormick was present in Spain, near Madrid. She captured remarkable images of the total solar eclipse. One photograph highlights a fiery red solar prominence on the sun's left edge—a massive plasma structure extending from the sun's surface into its corona, shaped by magnetic fields.

While some parts of the U.S. experienced only partial eclipses, enthusiasts in Maine managed to photograph the International Space Station transiting the partially obscured sun.

Viewers in Berlin and London witnessed a partial eclipse, where the moon did not completely cover the sun. In London, the eclipse was famously framed by the iconic Big Ben.

In Italy, a pinkish crescent of the sun was visible during the partial eclipse, observed even by players at an AC Milan soccer club training session.

As the moon advanced, observers might have spotted Baily's beads – fleeting glints of sunlight passing through lunar valleys along the moon's edge. These quickly vanished as the sun became completely hidden, revealing its faint outer atmosphere, the corona. This ethereal halo, typically invisible due to the sun's glare, pulsates with pale streams of plasma sculpted by the sun's magnetic field.

A screenshot from the European Space Agency's livestream, taken from the Astrophysical Observatory of Javalambre in Spain, also showcases the solar prominence in red during the moment of totality.