Eclipse 2026: Where, When & How to Watch (Both Hemispheres)

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Anna: Somewhere over the Arctic this afternoon, the

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sun is about to go out. Not for long,

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a couple of minutes at most. But for the

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first time on mainland Western Europe since

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1999.

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Avery: And here in the studio, it's the middle of a

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Sydney afternoon. So we're gonna watch it the

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way most of you will on a screen in the small

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hours, wide eyed.

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Welcome to Astronomy AstroDailyPod. I'm

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Avery.

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Anna: And I'm anna. It's Wednesday 12th

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August. Today, the only total

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solar eclipse of the how to catch it

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wherever you are, a NASA jet that chases

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the shadow. A magnetic field caught in the

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act of building a star. Why some

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worlds cook themselves alive. And

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tonight, a moonless meteor shower. Let's

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go. If you only clock one thing in the

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sky this year, it's happening in the next few

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hours. Today the moon's shadow falls

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across the far north of the planet and gives

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a lucky narrow strip of the world a total

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solar eclipse. The only one of

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2026.

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Avery: Give us the geography because this is a

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strange one. It doesn't run the usual way.

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Anna: It doesn't. Most totalities race

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roughly west to east. This one arcs

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up and over the pole. It begins at

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sunrise over the Taymyr Peninsula in

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Arctic Russia, sweeps across the top of the

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world and down the eastern side of Greenland,

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crosses western Iceland, Reykjavik included,

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then runs out over the North Atlantic, clips

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a tiny corner of northeastern Portugal and

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finishes by crossing northern Spain from

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Galicia to the Mediterranean, ending near the

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Balearics right at sunset.

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Avery: And um, this is a big deal specifically for

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Europe.

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Anna: A uh, huge deal. It's the first total

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solar eclipse over western Mainland Europe

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since 11 August

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1999, 27 years almost

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to the day. For Spain it's the first

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since 1905, for Iceland the

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first since 1954. People have

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booked these spots years out.

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Avery: So if I'm standing in the path, what do I

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actually get?

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Anna: Not long, but unforgettable. Maximum

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totality is about 2 minutes and 18

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seconds out over the Atlantic near the

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centerline. On land it's shorter. In

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Reykjavik, totality lands around

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17:48 Universal Time. That's

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just before six in the evening local and

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gives you a bit over a minute. Out on the

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Iceland's Snaefelsnes peninsula you do better

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then over in northern Spain, totality

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falls around 18:27 to

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18:33 UT that's

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8:27 to 8:33 in the evening,

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local evening.

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Avery: So the sun's getting low, very low.

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Anna: That's the catch. In Spain, the sun sits only

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about 10 degrees up on the north coast and

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as little as 4 degrees near the Balearic

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Sea. Gorgeous if you've got a clean horizon.

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But a hill, a forest, a building and you

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miss it. And the weather split is almost

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poetic. Iceland is climatologically

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the cloudier bet, Spain, the sunnier one.

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But Spain makes you pay with that low sun.

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Avery: Okay, now the part most of our audience

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needs, because most of us are nowhere near

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that strip, start with North America, our

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biggest audience.

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Anna: North America gets a genuine partial this

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afternoon. No totality anywhere on the

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continent, but a real bite out of the sun.

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And the further northeast you are, the bigger

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the bite. Eastern Canada does best.

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Nova Scotia sees around a third of the sun

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covered, about 33%. Northern

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Maine gets close to 28. Montreal

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about 18. Boston around 16,

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peaking near 155 in the afternoon

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Eastern time. New York around 9 or

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10% about 1:54. Eastern

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Toronto about 8, Washington D.C.

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about 10. And Alaska gets a lovely

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one in the morning. Fairbanks around

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37%.

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Avery: And um, crucially, that's a partial. So the

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rules are different.

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Anna: Completely different. And I'll say it

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plainly, if you're seeing a partial, the sun

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is never fully covered, so you must keep

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certified eclipse glasses on the entire

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time. We'll do the full safety line at the

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end, but that's the headline for North

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America. Glasses on, start to finish.

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Avery: Europe, outside the path, a deep partial

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Anna: low in the evening sky. London around

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91% covered. Paris, about

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92. Berlin 85.

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Vienna 87. Dramatic, but

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again, partial. So eye protection throughout.

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Avery: And then there's us, the Southern Hemisphere,

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Australia, New Zealand.

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Anna: Be honest with them straight up, we see

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nothing of this one directly, not a

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sliver. It's an entirely northern

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hemisphere event. But, and this is the good

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news, you can absolutely watch it live.

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NASA time and date and the exploratorium

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are all streaming from the path, including

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telescope feeds out of Spain in Australian

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Eastern time. That coverage runs roughly

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half past one to six in the morning Thursday,

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with the totality highlights landing

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somewhere around three to half past 4m am

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AEST, set an alarm, make a

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coffee and you'll see the corona in real

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time.

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Avery: That corona being the whole reason people

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chase these.

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Anna: That's it for those two minutes. The moon

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blocks the blinding disc of the sun and

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reveals the corona, the faint, pearly

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outer atmosphere we almost never get to see.

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It's not just beautiful, it's scientifically

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precious. Which, nice segue, is

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exactly why NASA is about to chase this

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shadow in a jet.

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Avery: So while millions look up One NASA team

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is going to look sideways at, uh, nearly

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50,000ft. As the eclipse

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crosses today, a NASA WB57

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high altitude jet will fly along the

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path and literally chase the Moon's shadow.

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Anna: Why fly it rather than just stand still like

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the rest of us?

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Avery: Because if you move with the shadow, you

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stretch out your totality from the ground.

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You get a couple of minutes from that jet.

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Cruising at around 740 kilometres

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an hour, the team extends your view of

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totality to nearly three. In the nose

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cone sit four cameras, visible and

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infrared, shooting at least 20 frames a

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second. The instrument's got a great name.

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Sci fi, scientifically calibrated in

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flight imagery

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Anna: and the science thereafter.

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Avery: The corona's biggest riddles. One,

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how the corona gets heated to something like

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a million degrees when the surface below it

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is a mere 5,500 thousand.

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Two, how those great looping prominences

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form and hang suspended above the sun. And

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three, how material in the corona feeds into

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the solar wind that washes over all of us.

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The printable investigator is Amir Caspi at

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the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.

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And his line is lovely. The sun is always

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changing. Every eclipse is different. So we

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might see something we've never seen before.

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Anna: And a, uh, total eclipse gives them something

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no spacecraft can.

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Avery: Right, exactly. And this is the clever

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bit. Space telescopes block the sun's disc

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with a little occulting disc called a

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coronagraph. But that also hides the inner

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corona closest to the surface, the very

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region where the heating happens. A, uh, real

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eclipse with the moon as a perfect occulture

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hands you that inner corona for free,

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frying above the clouds. And most of the

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water vapour also opens up infrared

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wavelengths you can't get from the ground.

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These same cameras flew the 2024 eclipse over

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North America. The team fixed some

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overexposed frames and sped up the Software

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so the 2026 data should come back sharper

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and faster.

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Anna: And it's not just the jet, there's a whole

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balloon army.

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Avery: There is the NASA supported

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nationwide Eclipse Balloon Beijing project

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led by Angela Dejardins at Montana State

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University is sending students from US

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Icelandic and Spanish universities to

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launch scientific balloons, around

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86 of them from Iceland and Spain.

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Before, during and after the eclipse.

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They're measuring what happens to the

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atmosphere when day suddenly turns to

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dusk. The ozone and the so called boundary

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layer near the ground that shifts with

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temperature and moisture. As NASA's Eclipse

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Programme Manager Kelly Couric put it, an

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eclipse gives us a vantage point on the sun

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we can't get anywhere else in the solar

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system. And today, students get to grab

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it.

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Anna: From the Sun's outer atmosphere to the birth

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of a star entirely. And a 30 year old

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mystery just got solved. Using the Alma

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array in Chile, astronomers have captured the

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first direct high resolution image of a

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magnetic field wrapped tightly around the jet

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streaming out of a still forming star.

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Avery: Paint the picture. What does it actually look

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like?

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Anna: Picture a twisted funnel shaped field, a

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corkscrew of magnetism sheathing the gas

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that's blasting away from the young star. The

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target is a mouthful. NGC

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1333 IRS 4A,

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a young double star system tucked inside the

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Perseus molecular cloud about 960

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light years away. And seeing that field wound

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around the outflow confirms a prediction

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theorists have been making for decades about

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how these jets are launched and shaped.

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Avery: Why does a baby star even need a jet?

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Anna: Beautiful question. It's a survival trick.

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As a star gathers material, it also gathers

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spin. Too much spin and it would tear itself

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apart before it ever finished forming. The

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magnetic field and the jet act like a release

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valve M they carry away excess material and

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angular momentum so the star can keep growing

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rather than spinning itself to pieces. This

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image shows the mechanism doing its job.

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Avery: And there's a bigger echo here, isn't there?

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Anna: There is, and this is the part I love. The

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same basic physics. A magnetic field

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channelling a jet is thought to play out at

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wildly different scales across the universe.

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From a newborn star like this one, all the

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way up to supermassive black holes that fire

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jets across entire galaxies. Same

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trick, unimaginably different sizes.

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The work is led by Tao Chung Ching, a former

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Jansky Fellow at the US National Radio

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Observatory. Published in Nature

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Communications and a small point of pride for

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our part of the sky. ALMA sits high in the

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Atacama in Chile, very much a Southern

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Hemisphere machine.

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Avery: Here's a question that sounds simple and

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absolutely isn't. Why did Venus,

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Earth's twin in size, turn into a furnace

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while Earth stayed livable? A planetary

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scientist at UC Riverside, Stephen Kane,

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thinks a big part of the answer might be

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something we routinely overlook. How fast a

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planet spins then really,

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Anna: why would rotation decide whether a world is

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hospitable?

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Avery: Because rotation sets how a star's heat gets

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spread around a planet. It shapes the winds,

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the weather, the way an atmosphere and any

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ocean circulate. Earth's roughly 24

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hour day keeps the energy moving and the

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climate regulated. Spin a world down slow

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enough, Kane argues, and you may tip it

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toward a runaway greenhouse. Heat pours in,

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can't escape, and you end up with Venus, a

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uh, crushing atmosphere and a surface hot

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enough to melt lead.

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Anna: So to test that on other planets, we just

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measure how fast they spin.

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Avery: That's the rub. It's genuinely hard. In a

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paper accepted by the Astronomical Journal,

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Kane warns that when you look at a distant

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planet, the motion you detect might be its

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howling winds, not the solid body underneath.

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Exactly the confusion Venus throws at us. The

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proposed fix is to observe at several

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wavelengths that probe different depths of

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the atmosphere and separate the true spin

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from the wind.

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Anna: And there's a mission coming that could

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actually run this experiment at scale.

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Avery: There is ESA's Plato, due to launch in

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March 2027. It's built to find and

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monitor lots of planets. And Cain reckons it

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could turn up hundreds of Venus like worlds

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if they're all slow rotators. That's a strong

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hint that spin really is a switch between a

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living world and a hellish one. If they're

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all over the place, we look elsewhere. Either

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way, a uh, lovely testable idea.

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Anna: And the sky isn't done with us today.

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Tonight, the night of the 12th into the 13th,

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the Perseid meteor shower hits its peak.

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And here's the gift. It's genuinely moonless

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because the same new moon that's giving the

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north its eclipse leaves our meteor sky pitch

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dark. These are the best Perseid conditions

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in years. Best window between

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midnight and dawn. And best of all in the pre

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dawn hours of the 13th when the radiant

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up in Perseus climbs highest. For the

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northern hemisphere, North America

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especially, this is your night. Get away

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from town lights, look up after midnight.

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Give your eyes 20 minutes and let them

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wander. No telescope, no glasses,

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just a dark sky and patience.

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Avery: And um, for those of us down south where

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Perseus barely gets off the

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Anna: floor, for Cygny and the southern

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hemisphere, the Perseus radiant only just

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scrapes the northern horizon, so you'll catch

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a trickle at best. Don't fret. The

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evening sky pays you back right after

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sunset. Venus is blazing low in the

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west, magnitude minus

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4.4, impossible to miss

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and just past its half lit

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dichotomy phase. If you've a telescope

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then before dawn there's a fine lineup of

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planets strung across the eastern sky.

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And Comet 10P Tempel 2 is

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still a southern hemisphere favoured

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binocular Target 1 for our part of the world.

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Avery: And um, the eclipse times one more time for

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everyone.

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Anna: For North America it's an afternoon. Partial

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Boston peaking about 1:55,

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New York about 1:54 Eastern Time.

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Glasses on throughout. For Australia and

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the wider southern hemisphere it's the live

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streams roughly half 1 to 6 in the

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morning AEST Thursday with

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totality around 3 to half 4am M

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Thursday.

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And that brings us to the line we never

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never look at a partly eclipsed sun without

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proper protection. Use eclipse glasses

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or a handheld solar viewer that meet the

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ISO

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123122

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standard. Ordinary sunglasses are not

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safe and neither is an unfiltered camera

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phone, binocular or telescope. If

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you're in the path of totality, you may look

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with the naked eye only during those brief

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seconds when the sun is complet completely

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covered and glasses go straight back on the

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instant the bright edge returns not in the

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path, then it's a partial the whole time.

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Protection stays on from start to finish.

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Avery: Whatever you catch today a uh, partial, a

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stream or the meteors tonight, tell us about

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00:15:24.900 --> 00:15:27.620
it. Everything lives at astronomydaily

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00:15:27.780 --> 00:15:30.580
IO the back catalogue, the daily news

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00:15:30.580 --> 00:15:33.260
feed, the newsletter, and a spot to leave a

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00:15:33.260 --> 00:15:35.870
review or drop us a line. We're at Astral

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00:15:35.870 --> 00:15:37.390
AstroDailyPod Pod everywhere.

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00:15:37.630 --> 00:15:40.350
Anna: We'll be back tomorrow to tell you how Shadow

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00:15:40.350 --> 00:15:43.150
Day went, the images, the science, and

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whatever the sun decided to show us. Until

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then, from Avery and from Anna.

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Avery: Enjoy the eclipse.

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Anna: Mind your eyes and clear skies.