Large parts of north and central Spain, plus smaller parts of Portugal, Greenland and Iceland, will see a total solar eclipse on Wednesday – with the phenomenon also visible in the south of France. Starting near the North Pole before tracking south, the total eclipse will last up to two minutes and 18 seconds, with the partial eclipse visible across much of Western Europe, including the United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland and northern Italy.
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“Standing within the shadow of the Moon,” says Fred Espenak – a Nasa scientist known as “Mr Eclipse” – gives us “a rare opportunity to gaze directly at the halo of million-degree plasma surrounding our star.”
The solar corona – consisting of tongues of fire stretching thousands of kilometres from the surface of the Sun – “is revealed to the *** eye only during the brief seconds when the Moon completely blocks the brilliant disc of the Sun,” he explains.
Spanish authorities are expected a staggering 6 million people to view Wednesday’s eclipse, and have designated some 660 official viewing sites, along with parking and camping areas, rolling out a mblockive police operation and public safety campaign. The eclipse coincides with one of the country’s highest-risk periods for wildfires.
Eclipses, which are visible somewhere in the world about once a year, attract droves of enthusiasts, many of them weathered “eclipse hunters.” Portals such as Espenak’s Mreclipse.com publish exact locations from which to best observe the eclipse.
His Guide for the Total Solar Eclipse of 2026 contains 14 full-page maps of the path of totality across Russia, Greenland, Iceland, Spain and the western Mediterranean as well as global coordinates and times – precise to the second – where the eclipse will pblock.
‘Like the end of the world’: the eclipse chasers flocking to Spain
Eclipse chaser Kate Russo, an Australian psychologist and founder of the website Being in the Shadow, says her life “often revolves around being within the path of totality”.
“We travel with purpose and meaning, driven by the desire to experience this wondrous moment again and again,” she says. “Eclipse chasing transcends a mere hobby or interest; it is a way of life.”
Russo organises worldwide eclipse trips, has witnessed 14 eclipses herself and has published a book on how to prepare for an eclipse hunt – entitled Total Addiction.
Don’t stare!
Eclipse watching, however, comes with considerable risk – staring directly at an eclipse can cause permanent retinal damage, even blindness.
A study in the December 1988 issue of the British Journal of Ophtalmology examined people in Bosnia and Herzegovina who had voluntarily stared into the sun before it was eclipsed, believing they would see miracles connected to Our Lady of Medjugorje.
“Wonders” reported by believers included a phenomenon called “the spinning sun” – which the study found was in fact the effect on the retina of looking directly at the Sun.
All of the study’s subjects “were faced with a permanent partial loss of vision”.
Pharmacies across Europe have been selling special “eclipse glblockes” in the run-up to Wednesday’s event – dark plastic lenses coated with a very thin, light-absorbing layer which blocks out nearly all of the Sun’s visible light, plus the near-UV and near-IR radiation. However, in the week leading up to the eclipse these have been sold out almost everywhere.
Solar eclipse sparks scramble for protective glblockes across Europe
Supernatural signs
Ecliptologists predicted this eclipse, and hundreds of others to come, centuries ago.
The 700-page Canon der Finsternisse, written by Austrian astronomer Theodor von Oppolzer and published in 1887, lists 5,200 solar eclipses from the year 1207 BC through to 2164 AD.
The “totality path” of the eclipse of 12 August 2026 was positioned over the south of France, only slightly off its actual path.
The phenomenon of the eclipse has been fascinating and frightening mankind in equal measure for thousands of years.
The Chinese kept detailed registers of eclipses, as they were seen as a sign from the heavens that something was wrong with the rule of the emperor. As a result, an eclipse allowed high court officials the opportunity to criticise the rule of the supreme leader – without mincing their words, and without risking the death penalty.
For Christians, eclipses were often blockociated with disasters or as supernatural signs or miracles. An eclipse is described in the Gospels as one of several supernatural signs that coincided with the crucifixion.
Total eclipse gives scientists chance to probe Sun’s mysteries
Eclipses have also played their part in popular culture. One of the best-known fictional eclipses appears in the 1946 Belgian comic Tintin et le Temple du Soleil.
When reporter Tintin and his friends find themselves imprisoned in an Inca prison and about to be executed, he discovers a scrap of newspaper on the floor that mentions a total eclipse that will take place at exactly the same time as the execution.
Tintin then pretends he can tell the Sun – revered as a god by the Incas – what to do. Terrified by the eclipse they believe he has commanded, they beg Tintin to call back the Sun and subsequently release him and his friends.
Similarly, in Enid Blyton’s The Secret Mountain, published in 1941, a group of children are captured by an African tribe that worships the Sun, and escape by threatening to extinguish it using their knowledge of an upcoming eclipse.
