NASA watched the August 12, 2026 eclipse from space as the Moon lined up between the Sun and Earth and cut a path of totality across northern Spain, Greenland, and Iceland. In northern Spain, skywatchers had only a narrow window for totality, while researchers used the event to study the corona and changes in Earth’s atmosphere.
León and San Millán de los Caballeros
In León, the partial eclipse began at 7:32 p.m. local time on August 12, 2026, and ended at 9:22 p.m. local time. Totality started at 8:28 p.m. local time and lasted about two minutes. The composite photo was taken before, during, and after the total eclipse from San Millán de los Caballeros, about 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, south of León in northwestern Spain.
That short total phase sat inside a wider event. Northern Spain was one of the few places on land in the path of totality, while the rest of Europe and parts of Africa, Canada, and the U.S. saw a partial eclipse. Sunset was approaching when the Moon’s shadow swept across Spain, and farther east in Spain the Sun set before the eclipse ended.
NASA Science and WB-57
Lindsey Doermann wrote the NASA Science story describing the eclipse and NASA’s observations. NASA science teams staged in Iceland on August 12 to chase the Moon’s shadow in one of NASA’s WB-57 high-altitude jets. The jet was used to image the corona in visible and infrared light.
The NASA-supported Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project launched scientific balloons before, during, and after the eclipse. The balloons were used to measure how Earth’s atmosphere changed when the Sun was temporarily blocked. A solar prominence was visible extending into the corona on the left in the photo taken during totality.
August 2, 2027
The next total solar eclipse will occur on August 2, 2027, and its path of totality will cross southern Spain, North Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. For readers in Spain who missed the August 12 event, the narrow strip of totality moves again in less than a year, but the observing plan is already clear: high-altitude aircraft for the corona, balloons for the atmosphere, and a path that again gives only a limited set of land viewers the full darkened Sun.
