The total solar eclipse of 12 August 2026

The penumbra makes landfall in the Arctic, sweeps down the east coast of Greenland and reaches Iceland, then runs south-east across the Atlantic and comes ashore in Asturias. It leaves the Earth at sunset over the Balearic Sea. Everywhere the shadow passes, the Sun is low: Spain sees totality with the Sun less than ten degrees above the horizon, which means the corona and the horizon are in the same photograph.

Magnitude

1.040

Longest totality

2 min 18 s

Greatest eclipse

65.2°N 25.1°W

Saros / member

126 / 48

Every eclipse belongs to a family. This one is member 48 of Saros 126, which produced the eclipse of 2008 over Siberia and will produce the next of its line in 2044. Members arrive 18 years and 11 days apart, each one about eight hours of Earth-rotation further west than the last.

The last total solar eclipse whose path crossed mainland Europe was in 1999. That one was also in Leo, also in August, and is the reason a whole generation of European astrologers has a story about it.

The umbra is about 130 km wide where it is deepest, and it lands on very few places. Of the cities listed here, 17 are inside it — the longest is Oviedo, at 108 seconds. Everywhere else in Europe gets a partial eclipse, and how much of one depends almost entirely on how far west you are.

At greatest eclipse the Sun stands at 20°02′ Leo and the Moon at the same degree — that is what a solar eclipse is, a new Moon exact enough to land on the lunar node. The whole configuration sits in one sign.

Sun

♌ 20°02′

Moon

♌ 20°08′

Mercury

♌ 5°07′

Jupiter

♌ 9°33′

Saturn

♈ 14°30′R

North Node

♒ 29°47′R

Four bodies are in Leo: the Sun and Moon at 20°, Jupiter at 9°33′ and Mercury at 5°07′. Jupiter is ten and a half degrees from the meeting point — a wide conjunction, which some schools count and some do not; the orb is stated so you can decide. Saturn and Neptune are both retrograde in Aries, and Saturn holds a loose trine to the eclipse degree.

The fixed star nearest the eclipse degree is Merak, 0.23° away.

An eclipse never comes alone. A partial lunar eclipse follows on August 28 at 04:12 UT, with the Moon at 4°51′ Pisces — the other end of the same season. Between the two dates the sky holds both ends of one axis open.

And the next total solar eclipse over mainland Europe is not another twenty-seven years away: it crosses southern Spain on 2 August 2027, with 6 minutes and change of totality at greatest — nearly three times this one. Spain gets two in twelve months.