Very cool! Just remember the one truth about solar eclipses: total or nothing.
While I don't want to dismiss partial eclipses entirely, please don't think that partial eclipses are "almost the same" as total eclipses. One is a curiosity, the other is a memorable life event.
This one passes nearby me. I have a 2 hour car drive planned for the day. Trying to convince people, specially with kids, to go to the totallity path, has proven useless: the websites say "eclipse will be at 99.9 something% here", and they are fully convinced it will be close enough.
Total or nothing. The sun is so bright even 0.1% will prevent you from seeing the eclipse directly. With all respect for your family, they are very wrong on this one. I'd beg them to accept the drive if I knew them. I drove 14 hours each way to see the last eclipse and boy it was so worth it.
Agreed, but I'll just add that annular eclipses occupy an intermediate point on that scale.
With a partial eclipse, shadows look odd and the sunlight "feels" noticeably dimmer and more muted, but if you're not paying attention you might not notice much out of the ordinary.
An annular eclipse is much more dramatic and unmistakable. It's not as striking as totality, and of course you can't directly observe it without eye protection, but the "ring of fire" is beautiful in its own way.
Partial and annular solar eclipses are interesting.
Total solar eclipses are magical.
The sun turns into a gleaming jewel and all of nature around you enters another dimension. The animals freak out, the temperature of the air around you drops dramatically, your shadows morph and multiply into weird shapes, it feels like midnight with an ethereal glow.
You see the atmosphere of the sun glow in all chromatic glory.
Just to add onto the strange observations to encourage more people to go:
- I saw a child start laughing uncontrollably at 99.9% and then go completely silent and literally fall over at 100%
- A grown woman began sobbing
Occurred to me that we humans are among those animals that "start acting strangely" when this event occurs. Even when we know what's happening!
For me personally, it was the first and only time in my life that I felt, in a spatial awareness sense, that I was on a rock flying through space. The immensity, scale, anciency, and inevitability of the whole system just really hit me in the face in a way that is impossible to describe.
Just be careful while looking towards the sun even if you're concentrating on the screen. Even though it's not as strong as normal it's still strong enough to potentially damage your eyes. Some kind of shade is advised.
2. Don't let your partial experience this week check off the "see an eclipse" box and then not try to see totality – totality is an absolute must-see event
In the Dwarkesh podcast about relativity they talked about one of the ways to prove einsteins theory was to observe a total eclipse - stars that should not be visible were predicted to bend their light rays and be able to be seen. Explorers launched grand expeditions in the early 1900s to be the first to witness and prove the phenomenon.
Made me yearn for a more heroic time.
They kept being thwarted by weather, clouds etc and eventually scientists worked out the theory could be easily proven by the red shift of stars by direct observation.
> scientists worked out the theory could be easily proven
Theories aren't proven.
Einstein, working from previous theories and models, wrote his hypothesis or proposal of General Relativity. This, too, gained consensus and gave rise to mathematical models. The models made predictions, and the predictions have been largely confirmed to date. It has proven to be a robust theory without notable falsification.
Therefore, the theory enjoys popularity and prominence, and a good reputation in the scientific consensus. There is no "proving a theory" but the models had predicted the gravitational lensing phenomenon, and empirical observations confirmed these predictions as reality, and science marches on.
In Spain it's a trio of consecutive eclipses from 2026 to 2028 (the last one annular). To view the second one I don't even need travel anywhere.
Will be in Saragossa on Wednesday and gonna use Canon binos with image stabilization, the partial phase with filter and then some precious seconds without (a scary moment, I'll rely on an alarm to prevent my eyes to get damaged when the totality is over). Some people generally advised to skip any instruments and just enjoy it with your own eyes for the first time, but I'm too curious about corona details to let this opportunity pass.
I think I will just cross the river and find a better place somewhere in the Parque del Agua Luis Buñuel or Expo. Should be also packed but a bit less then the bridges
"Zaragoza (Spanish: [θaɾaˈɣoθa]), traditionally known in English as Saragossa[7] (/ˌsærəˈɡɒsə/ SARR-ə-GOSS-ə)" according to Wikipedia, originally Caesaraugusta and later Saraqusṭah to be exact
Can we please stop with this nonsense? No matter where you live and which language you speak you never call the majority of places on Earth right. Can we just accept it and move on?
I saw the one in Canada back in 2024, I don’t think I have ever witnessed such an amazing phenomenon like that before, a white glowing ring in the sky!! I will see if I can catch the 2027.
I brought binoculars to the 2024 event and made sure to keep my eyes closed during the preceding partial solar eclipse (eye acclimation).
After the total eclipse was over, I watched a single honeybee re-orient itself, having temporarily lost its heliocentric bearings (bees "see" the sun's polarity, which helps keep them oriented).
Having also witnessed the 2017 total eclipse, certainly these are memorable events worth traveling into their totalities (could not say the same for partial eclipses).
I have a telescope and traveled hours just so I can see it, and it’s truly memorable, not just the totality but also the trip and all the details of it, I was standing with my telescope outside on the hill (which is also an old castle) and when people were leaving after the totality, they all lined up asking me to see the partial with the telescope (I had the sun filter), kids, families, tourists, everyone!
> having temporarily lost its heliocentric bearings (bees "see" the sun's polarity, which helps keep them oriented).
Thanks for sharing that, I knew bees see different colors but not the sun’s polarity, I just spent two hours down the rabbit hole reading and watching bees stuff, till I ended up with hornets killing the whole beehives so had to stop!
I was able to catch the last solar eclipse in the US, and it was amazing. I'm a little sad I won't be able to catch this one, especially in Mallorca. Seeing the eclipse low in the sky, an hour before sunset. That has got to be a phenomenal view.
I think this tool is super neat. I love the shadow simulation for the terrain. Very well done!
The sea is hitting record high temperatures, we're overrun by tourists and our country is on fire but at least we get like three eclipses in a row, so that's pretty cool :) Jokes aside, life's overall pretty great, and the eclipses are exciting!
I'm one of the two developers of a weather app, so we had cloud data for the whole path and turned it into a plain page: https://forecastbar.com/eclipse-2026/ It gives cloud cover at the actual eclipse hour rather than a daily average, city by city, free and nothing to install.
As of tonight it splits sharply. Iceland is largely a write-off: Reykjavik and the Westman Islands are both 98% cloud at eclipse hour and flat all evening, so it isn't a timing problem you can wait out. The Westfjords are the exception — Ísafjörður is 75%, still poor but the best number in the country by a wide margin, and it's inside totality at about 1m33s.
Northern Spain is the good half: Burgos 8%, Zaragoza 8%, Bilbao 11%, Tarragona 13%. Palma de Mallorca is at 1% and it's in the path; Madrid and Lisbon, just outside it, are 1% too.
It's one commercial model four days out, so treat it as a second opinion. Where it disagrees with AEMET or the Met Office, believe them. We refresh it each morning until Wednesday.
Let's not forget who makes all these open-source interactive projects possible: Works by the US Government and Military are in the Public Domain by law. All the maps and data you got, NASA and the Naval Observatory generated it with their systems, their sensors, their satellites, their employees and enlisted men.
Very cool! Just remember the one truth about solar eclipses: total or nothing.
While I don't want to dismiss partial eclipses entirely, please don't think that partial eclipses are "almost the same" as total eclipses. One is a curiosity, the other is a memorable life event.
This one passes nearby me. I have a 2 hour car drive planned for the day. Trying to convince people, specially with kids, to go to the totallity path, has proven useless: the websites say "eclipse will be at 99.9 something% here", and they are fully convinced it will be close enough.
+1 to the sibling comments. I'd hardly even step outside my door to see 99.9%, but would travel continents for 100%.
In fact I had a flight booked to Spain to see this one which I unfortunately won't be able to make anymore.
It is literally night and day. Total eclipses are absolutely profound.
Total or nothing. The sun is so bright even 0.1% will prevent you from seeing the eclipse directly. With all respect for your family, they are very wrong on this one. I'd beg them to accept the drive if I knew them. I drove 14 hours each way to see the last eclipse and boy it was so worth it.
It isn’t. I’ve seen both total and partial, and it’s (literally) night and day. There’s no comparing the two, in my opinion.
Agreed, but I'll just add that annular eclipses occupy an intermediate point on that scale.
With a partial eclipse, shadows look odd and the sunlight "feels" noticeably dimmer and more muted, but if you're not paying attention you might not notice much out of the ordinary.
An annular eclipse is much more dramatic and unmistakable. It's not as striking as totality, and of course you can't directly observe it without eye protection, but the "ring of fire" is beautiful in its own way.
If you've ever needed an excuse to rent a sports car and drive for 4-8 hours, this is the one.
Got caught in a day-long traffic jam leaving a rural area in North America after the 2017 total eclipse.
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Partial and annular solar eclipses are interesting.
Total solar eclipses are magical.
The sun turns into a gleaming jewel and all of nature around you enters another dimension. The animals freak out, the temperature of the air around you drops dramatically, your shadows morph and multiply into weird shapes, it feels like midnight with an ethereal glow.
You see the atmosphere of the sun glow in all chromatic glory.
You'll never witness anything else like it.
Just to add onto the strange observations to encourage more people to go:
- I saw a child start laughing uncontrollably at 99.9% and then go completely silent and literally fall over at 100%
- A grown woman began sobbing
Occurred to me that we humans are among those animals that "start acting strangely" when this event occurs. Even when we know what's happening!
For me personally, it was the first and only time in my life that I felt, in a spatial awareness sense, that I was on a rock flying through space. The immensity, scale, anciency, and inevitability of the whole system just really hit me in the face in a way that is impossible to describe.
The drop in temperature was the most striking part for me. It wasn't just dark, it was night in the middle of the day for a couple of minutes.
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Obligatory reference https://xkcd.com/2914/
Really? Well that's sad. I'll be going to see my first partial eclipse this week.
A partial eclipse is still cool. I witnessed a 70% partial eclipse once and it was still impressing. The colors changed, the sun was visibly dimmer.
A total eclipse is just on a whole different level.
BTW, you can't photograph a partial eclipse with your phone directly but you can snap a picture of the reflection in the lenses. https://imgur.com/a/partial-solar-eclipse-europe-march-2015-...
Just be careful while looking towards the sun even if you're concentrating on the screen. Even though it's not as strong as normal it's still strong enough to potentially damage your eyes. Some kind of shade is advised.
1. Try to travel to totality if you can
2. Don't let your partial experience this week check off the "see an eclipse" box and then not try to see totality – totality is an absolute must-see event
It’s worth traveling to see totality if you can swing it
I suggest this one: https://eclipsemap.xyz
This is really good, found a possible great spot near Lugo!
A well-known Dutch photographer made handy tool: https://eclipse.albertdros.com
In the Dwarkesh podcast about relativity they talked about one of the ways to prove einsteins theory was to observe a total eclipse - stars that should not be visible were predicted to bend their light rays and be able to be seen. Explorers launched grand expeditions in the early 1900s to be the first to witness and prove the phenomenon.
Made me yearn for a more heroic time.
They kept being thwarted by weather, clouds etc and eventually scientists worked out the theory could be easily proven by the red shift of stars by direct observation.
All times need heroes.
> one of the ways to prove einsteins theory
> scientists worked out the theory could be easily proven
Theories aren't proven.
Einstein, working from previous theories and models, wrote his hypothesis or proposal of General Relativity. This, too, gained consensus and gave rise to mathematical models. The models made predictions, and the predictions have been largely confirmed to date. It has proven to be a robust theory without notable falsification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens
Therefore, the theory enjoys popularity and prominence, and a good reputation in the scientific consensus. There is no "proving a theory" but the models had predicted the gravitational lensing phenomenon, and empirical observations confirmed these predictions as reality, and science marches on.
In Spain it's a trio of consecutive eclipses from 2026 to 2028 (the last one annular). To view the second one I don't even need travel anywhere.
Will be in Saragossa on Wednesday and gonna use Canon binos with image stabilization, the partial phase with filter and then some precious seconds without (a scary moment, I'll rely on an alarm to prevent my eyes to get damaged when the totality is over). Some people generally advised to skip any instruments and just enjoy it with your own eyes for the first time, but I'm too curious about corona details to let this opportunity pass.
Also on my way there - I’m curious how packed the city is going to be. I imagine the bridges are going to be absolutely packed
I think I will just cross the river and find a better place somewhere in the Parque del Agua Luis Buñuel or Expo. Should be also packed but a bit less then the bridges
1 reply →
it's called Zaragoza
"Zaragoza (Spanish: [θaɾaˈɣoθa]), traditionally known in English as Saragossa[7] (/ˌsærəˈɡɒsə/ SARR-ə-GOSS-ə)" according to Wikipedia, originally Caesaraugusta and later Saraqusṭah to be exact
Can we please stop with this nonsense? No matter where you live and which language you speak you never call the majority of places on Earth right. Can we just accept it and move on?
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We will be in Ibiza but more of a coincidence. I didn't even know that there is one when we booked.
What makes this eclipse VERY different is the low angle (3-4 degress), so the viewpoints need to be planned well.
Also the clouds further to the west are extremely important, for Spain there is
https://www.aemet.es/es/eltiempo/prediccion/destacados/p5_t?...
as well as
https://visualizadores.ign.es/eclipses/2026
Very detailed site. It said open source. where is the source?
https://gitlab.com/globus-faber-public/eclipsefan
Neither of the two licenses are open-source licenses. In particular, the licenses are encumbered by the noncommercial restrictions.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
The outputs, rather than the source code, are said to be under this CC-BY-NC-SA licensing.
https://opensource.org/osd
I am not familiar with Polyform, but my cursory research indicates that this family of licenses is deliberately and consistently non-open-source.
https://polyformproject.org/about
It is profoundly deceptive to post this headlining as "Open-source" when it is deliberately not.
Whoah, so cool how the map shows the shadow of mountains at that late time in the day. Geneva and the Jura look awesome.
I’ll be in Iceland this week to photograph it. Any other HNers going to be around?
I’m @sneak.07 on Signal, let’s meet up.
I'll be there! Hoping the forecast changes!
Best of luck with the weather!
A real treat for all the pilgrims on the Camino this year
I saw the one in Canada back in 2024, I don’t think I have ever witnessed such an amazing phenomenon like that before, a white glowing ring in the sky!! I will see if I can catch the 2027.
I brought binoculars to the 2024 event and made sure to keep my eyes closed during the preceding partial solar eclipse (eye acclimation).
After the total eclipse was over, I watched a single honeybee re-orient itself, having temporarily lost its heliocentric bearings (bees "see" the sun's polarity, which helps keep them oriented).
Having also witnessed the 2017 total eclipse, certainly these are memorable events worth traveling into their totalities (could not say the same for partial eclipses).
> these are memorable events
It's a fascinating learning experience. Birds fall silent and the temperature drops quickly. Our species is too inconsiderate of Sol and nature.
> bees "see" the sun's polarity, which helps keep them oriented.
For those who share the interest, here is an article about bees' eyes:
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/how-bees-use...
I have a telescope and traveled hours just so I can see it, and it’s truly memorable, not just the totality but also the trip and all the details of it, I was standing with my telescope outside on the hill (which is also an old castle) and when people were leaving after the totality, they all lined up asking me to see the partial with the telescope (I had the sun filter), kids, families, tourists, everyone!
> having temporarily lost its heliocentric bearings (bees "see" the sun's polarity, which helps keep them oriented).
Thanks for sharing that, I knew bees see different colors but not the sun’s polarity, I just spent two hours down the rabbit hole reading and watching bees stuff, till I ended up with hornets killing the whole beehives so had to stop!
I'm going up to Castellón to catch it with the drone
I was able to catch the last solar eclipse in the US, and it was amazing. I'm a little sad I won't be able to catch this one, especially in Mallorca. Seeing the eclipse low in the sky, an hour before sunset. That has got to be a phenomenal view.
I think this tool is super neat. I love the shadow simulation for the terrain. Very well done!
Awesome, people in Spain are lucky to see this!
The sea is hitting record high temperatures, we're overrun by tourists and our country is on fire but at least we get like three eclipses in a row, so that's pretty cool :) Jokes aside, life's overall pretty great, and the eclipses are exciting!
People in Iceland as well!
Heavy rain forcast on Wednesday, with sun the day before and after.
Hoping the weather forecast will shift (as often happens here)!
In Hofn right now, taking the ring road.
We have a hotel in þingeyri on eclipse day. We're at 1min50s at our hotel.
Basque Spaniard there; I will be at one of the easiest places to watch it (mountainous place, near the Bay of Biscay).
Incredible page. Taking into account terrain and sunlight path. Wow
Such a sophisticated website with great details. Good luck on watching. I think, rest of folks in other parts of the word will be tuning in virtually.
I'm one of the two developers of a weather app, so we had cloud data for the whole path and turned it into a plain page: https://forecastbar.com/eclipse-2026/ It gives cloud cover at the actual eclipse hour rather than a daily average, city by city, free and nothing to install.
As of tonight it splits sharply. Iceland is largely a write-off: Reykjavik and the Westman Islands are both 98% cloud at eclipse hour and flat all evening, so it isn't a timing problem you can wait out. The Westfjords are the exception — Ísafjörður is 75%, still poor but the best number in the country by a wide margin, and it's inside totality at about 1m33s.
Northern Spain is the good half: Burgos 8%, Zaragoza 8%, Bilbao 11%, Tarragona 13%. Palma de Mallorca is at 1% and it's in the path; Madrid and Lisbon, just outside it, are 1% too.
It's one commercial model four days out, so treat it as a second opinion. Where it disagrees with AEMET or the Met Office, believe them. We refresh it each morning until Wednesday.
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Public Domain map: https://aa.usno.navy.mil/downloads/eclipses/eclipse_sun_2026...
Let's not forget who makes all these open-source interactive projects possible: Works by the US Government and Military are in the Public Domain by law. All the maps and data you got, NASA and the Naval Observatory generated it with their systems, their sensors, their satellites, their employees and enlisted men.
It's very presumptive of you to assume the USA is the only source.
The site credits many more European sources than American.