On 12 August, a total solar eclipse will sweep across parts of Europe and the Atlantic ocean as the moon passes between Earth and the sun, blocking out sunlight. Parts of the US and Africa, along with the entire UK and much of Europe and Canada, will see a partial solar eclipse.

Where can I see the eclipse in the UK and US?

While the total eclipse will be short and only visible in a few areas, a partial eclipse, with the moon taking a “bite” out of the sun, will last much longer across about a quarter of the entire planet. It won’t be as dramatic as a total eclipse – the corona will not become visible, and the ambient light levels and temperatures won’t drop as dramatically – but will be watchable for many more people.

In the UK and Ireland, 90 to 96 per cent of the sun will be covered by the moon. In London, the eclipse will last from 6.17 to 8.06pm, with the maximum at 7.12. The sun will be setting, so you need to be somewhere with a clear view to the west.

In most of Canada, Alaska and the northeastern US, the moon will cover less than half of the sun. Montreal will get an 18 per cent eclipse at 1.45pm and New York will get a 9 per cent eclipse at 1.54pm.

Where can I see the total eclipse?

Totality, which occurs when the moon lines up perfectly with the disc of the sun and blocks it out entirely, will begin in Russia around midday before sweeping eastward across the Arctic ocean. It will pass just south of the North Pole and make landfall in northeastern Greenland just after 4.00pm local time.

The shadow will then rush along the eastern coast of Greenland at a speed of more than 3400 kilometres per hour. The maximum length of totality will be about 2 minutes and 18 seconds, as the moon’s shadow crosses from Greenland into the Atlantic ocean. It will cross to Iceland, at which point the eclipse will become visible from more heavily inhabited areas – everywhere it will have passed so far is home only to small villages, research stations and those specifically making the journey to see the eclipse. In Reykjavík, though, totality will be visible for just over one minute at 5.48pm local time. This is the first time a total eclipse has been visible in Iceland since 1954, and the last time one will be visible there until 2196.

After skimming the western coast of Iceland, the total eclipse will make another ocean crossing and reach land again in northern Spain just before 8.30pm local time, grazing the northeast corner of Portugal and crossing the Balearic Islands off Spain’s east coast before the sun sets and the eclipse is over.

How can I watch the eclipse safely?

During a total or partial eclipse, eye protection is needed the whole time. If you don’t have eclipse glasses, you can use a pinhole camera or even natural shadows to create a projection of the sun’s shape as the moon passes in front of it. Read this article for more details of how to do that.

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What happens during a total solar eclipse?

During totality, when the disc of the sun is completely concealed by the moon, temperatures on the ground rapidly drop by several degrees and daytime transforms into twilight. The stars and the outer reaches of the sun become visible. Usually, the sun’s outermost layer, the corona, is completely lost in the glare from its far brighter inner regions, but when those are blocked out, its shimmering sheets of extraordinarily hot plasma become briefly visible to the naked eye. In all other phases of the eclipse, it is crucial to wear eclipse glasses or use a solar filter while looking directly at the sun to prevent eye damage, but during totality it is safe to look at the corona.

That is precisely what many solar scientists will be doing during August’s eclipse. Total eclipses mark a valuable opportunity to observe the corona and try to unravel its many mysteries, including why it is so much hotter than the sun’s surface.

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The first images of the impact crater caused by an out-of-control SpaceX craft have emerged. Part of a SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon at about 8700 kilometres per hour on 5 August.

The images were taken by the Danuri lunar orbiter, operated by the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA). They show both before and after the impact and reveal that the crash did indeed leave a crater.

The craft in question was the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched in January last year, carrying the Hakuto-R spacecraft from commercial company ispace – which, ironically, also crashed into the moon during an unsuccessful landing attempt.

Astronomers around the world had trained their telescopes on the spot in the hope of observing the impact, but its tiny size made it virtually impossible for amateur observers to make out.

KASA revealed the images and warned that videos being shared on social media purporting to show footage of the impact are fake.

It is thought that the almost 14-metre-long, 4000-kilogram Falcon upper stage impacted the moon at 5.35am BST on 5 August, near to Einstein crater – named for physicist Albert Einstein – which is towards the edge of the visible moon from Earth.

NASA had predicted prior to impact that the crash would create a crater 18 metres wide and 4 metres deep. Further images from a NASA lunar orbiter will provide more detail of the site in the coming days and weeks.

at the Open University, UK, says the images make it hard to be certain about the nature of the crater, but that higher-quality ones should emerge in time.

“The moon’s got about 100 million natural craters in that size range, so in the scheme of things, this is nothing,” he says. “You’ll get several a decade of this kind of size forming naturally.”

Unlike the Apollo lander sites, which have been photographed in great detail, the SpaceX impact site may not show any visible evidence of the craft because of its high impact speed, says Rothery. But the ejected regolith will probably be lighter in colour than the surrounding surface, at least until it is weathered by sunlight over tens of millions of years.

Some had suggested in the wake of the impact that the new crater be named after SpaceX owner Elon Musk, but the suggestion has been shot down by astronomers.

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, chair of the International Astronomical Union Working Group on Planetary System Nomenclature, which oversees the naming of celestial objects and features, says it wouldn’t be in line with rules on such matters.

“Formal feature naming is restricted to natural geological formations that serve a long-term cartographic and scientific reference purpose for the global community,” she says. “Spacecraft impact sites are frequently given informal or working nicknames by mission teams. The [SpaceX] mission team can give it any nickname they like, but it will not become an official name.”

Furthermore, if a crater is named to commemorate a person, this person has to have been deceased for at least three years, says Schulz, while Musk is still alive.

During a solar eclipse, the shadow of the moon moves across the surface of Earth as the moon travels between our planet and the sun. Thanks to a cosmic coincidence – the fact that the sun is both about 400 times larger than the moon and about 400 times as distant – when the two line up just right, they appear the same size and the moon completely covers the disc of the sun in a total eclipse. 

Totality, the period in which the disc of the sun is completely hidden, is the only time when it is safe to look directly at the sun; otherwise, looking at the sun can burn your retinas and cause vision loss. But during a partial eclipse, or even when no eclipse is happening at all, you can still look at the sun – you just need proper eye protection or a clever trick to project its image so you don’t have to look directly at it. Here are four ways to look at the sun without burning your eyeballs.

1. Wear eclipse glasses

This is the safest way to view a solar eclipse, and the only one that actually involves staring straight at the sun. Regular sunglasses won’t do the trick: eclipse glasses are about 100,000 times darker, letting through only a tiny fraction of sunlight to protect your eyes.

Looking through a pair of eclipse glasses, or any other kind of proper solar filter, you shouldn’t be able to see anything but the sun – even the brightest indoor light should appear extremely dim. The American Astronomical Society has put together a list of trusted suppliers, which you can see .

If you aren’t sure about the safety of your eclipse glasses or if they don’t seem quite dark enough, stick with one of the other methods on this list. If you are looking through a telescope or binoculars, eclipse glasses won’t be enough to protect your eyes – make sure any magnifying device has a proper solar filter over its objective lens or lenses, which are the ones through which light enters the device.

2. Use the shadows

The easiest way to view a partial eclipse doesn’t require any special equipment at all. When light passes through a small opening, it projects the shape of whatever emitted it onto the next surface that it hits.

During a partial eclipse, this means you can use shadows to see how much of the sun is hidden behind the moon. Anything can create the small openings necessary for this: a colander, cheese grater, straw hat or even your outstretched hands with fingers creating a sort of grid shape.

Even just standing under a tree and looking at the shadows cast by the leaves can reveal a smattering of crescent sun shapes on the ground.

3. Pinhole projection

If you want to get a little bit more involved, you can use the same effect to create a pinhole projector, which is essentially just a surface with a tiny hole poked in it.

If you take a cardboard box and poke a small hole in one end with a pushpin or pen, the shape of the sun will be projected on the other end. All you have to do is face away from the sun with the hole pointing towards the sun and look down to the other end of the box (if you have a big enough box, you can even put your head inside – if not, you might have to cut a slot to look through in the same side as the hole) and the shape of the sun will be projected there.

Don’t look through the tiny hole, because your head will block the light that should be shining through it. Looking through the hole directly at the sun will still burn your eyes, so you should only look at the projection on the other end of the box.

4. Mirror projection

This projection method is similar to the others – the theme being, don’t look right at the sun – but may be easier if you want a large projection of the sun that lots of people can look at.

All you need is a small, flat mirror and some way of angling it so that it reflects the sunlight onto a flat surface such as a wall or screen. If you cover the mirror almost entirely using a sheet of paper or cloth with a small hole cut in the middle, it will work just like the pinhole projector to shine an image of the sun on the wall.

The smaller the hole is, the sharper the image will be, although it will get dimmer as less light shines through. But if you can get your image big or sharp enough, you might even be able to see any sunspots that happen to be pocking the sun’s face during the eclipse.

Once again, don’t look at the sun via its reflection in the mirror, which is just as dangerous as looking directly at it if you don’t have eclipse glasses on. Only look at the projection of the sun, and you will be able to enjoy the eclipse without any unnecessary visits to an ophthalmologist.

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The clearest images ever taken of the sun’s surface reveal striking wave patterns, reminiscent of those sometimes seen in clouds on Earth. Analysis of the patterns may improve our predictions of solar weather.

On 14 April 2025, with just a few minutes of their allotted time remaining at the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii and with clouds fast closing in that would force the closure of the observatory’s lens cover, a team of astronomers collected a series of extraordinary images – the most detailed ever recorded of the sun’s surface, known as the photosphere.

Most remarkably, the images revealed, for the first time, wave-shaped vortices known as Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities (KHI) that had long been predicted to exist on the sun but had never before been observed.

“These swirling, vortex-like patterns are universal, appearing in cloud formations, ocean currents and across the cosmos,” says team member  at the National Solar Observatory in Colorado.

“A famous example is [Vincent] van Gogh’s The Starry Night, where the sky’s vortex structures closely resemble turbulent KHI structures,” he says. “A similar parallel appears in Hokusai’s famous woodblock print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, where the curling crests of the wave echo the iconic shape of KHI billows.”

Another member of the team, , also at the National Solar Observatory, says that while the existence of some KHI in the solar photosphere was expected, it was a surprise to see the patterns “everywhere” in the images they processed.

The scale of what they were seeing was extraordinary – the telescope is 150 million kilometres from the sun, but it could pick out objects just a few tens of kilometres in length on its surface.

“Detecting and following the development of the 25 kilometre-size KHI vortices on the sun and identifying them as such is similar to identifying and tracking the motion of an average-sized ant on the ground from 160 km away,” says Wöger.

The KHI wave structures are formed on the boundaries of what the researchers describe as “granules”, structures between 500 and 2000 km in diameter, which are cells of rising plasma emerging from deep within the sun. The granules observed in the study were either close to a sunspot – a dark patch where magnetism blocks the escape of heat – or to one of numerous smaller sunspots called pores.

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The researchers think the KHI waves play a critical role in the dissipation and movement of heat. They may also influence the magnetic fields that drive coronal flares and other solar weather that can affect life on Earth and disrupt electromagnetic devices.

Wöger says the sun’s magnetic field is potentially impacted by KHI everywhere across its surface.

“To better understand and eventually forecast the sun’s most disruptive behaviours, we first have to understand the tiny physical processes that drive it,” he says. “This discovery reveals one of those processes for the first time at a level of detail we have not seen before.”

SpaceX rocket crashes into moon at 8700 kilometres per hour

A rocket launched last year is thought to have smashed into the lunar surface this morning, creating the moon's newest crater

 at the University of Sydney says that not only were the astronomers observing the sun at a finer scale than ever seen before, but they captured “something that looks incredible”.

“You zoom in, and you zoom in, and you zoom in, and then you see fundamental physics at the scale of 19 km – that’s just amazing,” says Wheatland.

He agrees that the discovery may help with understanding solar weather. 

“One of the outstanding problems in solar astrophysics is coronal heating,” he says. “It’s possible that Kelvin–Helmholtz instability is contributing to that.”

Part of a discarded SpaceX rocket is believed to have crashed into the moon at 8700 kilometres per hour earlier this morning. Astronomers around the world trained their telescopes on the predicted site of the impact in the hope of capturing images and eking some useful science out of the accidental collision.

The craft is the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched in January last year carrying the Hakuto-R spacecraft from commercial company ispace – which, ironically, also crashed into the moon during an unsuccessful landing attempt.

It is thought that the almost 14-metre-long, 4000-kilogram Falcon upper stage impacted the moon at 5.35am BST today. The crash was predicted to occur close to Einstein crater, which would place it towards the edge of the visible moon from Earth.

at the University of Leicester, UK, says that telescopes around the world were trained on the site of the impact and that images of the area before and after impact will emerge soon. Lunar orbiters from South Korea and the US will also observe the impact site.

NASA predicts that the impact will have created a crater that is 18 metres wide and 4 metres deep.

“It is not a good thing to be randomly sending debris into the moon,” says Sargeant. “It’s not something we should be making a habit of. What if it hit a site of special interest? What if it caused damage to the historical Apollo landers?”

Both NASA and the European Space Agency are required to take the end of a spacecraft’s life into account before a mission launches, ensuring that there is a plan and enough fuel to safely deorbit it. Commercial companies aren’t covered by the same rules, says Sargeant, although efforts to introduce such requirements are under way.

When SpaceX launched the Falcon in question, the heavy payload required more thrust than usual, meaning that the rocket ended up floating uncontrollably in space. It eventually fell into an orbit that unintentionally put it on a collision course with the moon.

But Sargeant says that some science can be salvaged from the event, with astronomers likely to capture rare images of a moon crater being created and the lunar regolith plumes ejected from the impact.

at the Macau University of Science and Technology, China, says that all planetary surfaces should ideally be kept as pristine as is feasible – without hindering exploration – but that the moon has already been impacted by decades of US, Soviet and Russian, Chinese, Indian, Israeli and other nations’ missions, as well as millions of years of asteroid impacts.

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“Rockets have been landing, crashing and taking off from the surface for decades now,” says Bugiolacchi. A controlled crash may even be welcomed by planetary scientists, he says. “Knowing the projectile’s mass, impact velocity, angle and trajectory provide invaluable data on surface evolution. The primary agent shaping most planetary surfaces is high-velocity impacts. Normally, these events are entirely random in terms of physical properties and dynamics.”

“The moon already has about 100 million natural impact craters of the size expected to be made by this crash, so such a crash will hardly make a difference,” says at the Open University, UK. “I’d be happy with a deliberate collision into the moon if it were done with a science aim and was set up so as to be studied to learn about the moon’s interior or surface composition. However, this crash is accidental and reckless.”

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Astronomers have spotted one of the strangest-looking asteroids we have ever seen. The space rock, called 44 Nysa, was discovered in 1857, but it wasn’t until now that we had the observational capability to figure out its shape – and its shape is weird.

An E-type asteroid, which is a relatively rare type rich in a mineral called enstatite, 44 Nysa circles the sun in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is the brightest E-type asteroid we know of and one of the largest, with an average diameter of about 75 kilometres, which makes it a tempting observational target.

at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona and her colleagues used the Large Binocular Telescope, also in Arizona, and the Very Large Telescope in Chile to take a closer look at 44 Nysa. They used that data to build a three-dimensional model of the asteroid, and found that it seems to have three lobes, each separated from the others by a thin “neck” that holds the asteroid together.

While two-lobed asteroids are relatively common, trinary ones are much rarer. It isn’t yet clear how exactly it formed – it could have once been a more normal-shaped asteroid and then been battered beyond recognition by other space rocks, or the three lobes could have once been separate and then joined together in what’s called a contact trinary. Either way, its interior must be strong to have stuck together.

Another wrinkle in the story is that 44 Nysa seems to have a tiny moon, just about a kilometre across. In future observations, measuring the moon’s orbit could give us more information about 44 Nysa’s interior structure, and therefore its origins.

Western Europe’s first total solar eclipse since 1999 will happen on 12 August and see eclipse chasers travel to eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain for totality, when the moon covers the sun’s disc and the usually hidden solar corona bursts into view. Solar and atmospheric scientists will be among them – and above them.

It is tempting to think total solar eclipses have been made obsolete for scientists by spacecraft. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has flown through the sun’s corona, while the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter and study the sun from space. can even create artificial eclipses in orbit. So why do scientists still need to chase the moon’s shadow across Earth?

The answer is simple: total eclipses offer cheap and accessible opportunities to study both the sun and Earth. “Research groups that have novel ideas can go to an eclipse and take observations without having to bid for tens of millions of pounds’ worth of grants from NASA or the European Space Agency – the barrier to entry is much lower,” says , a solar physicist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado.

One example is the , which will send teams from several US universities to Spain and Iceland to study atmospheric responses to the eclipse. Balloons released in Spain will reach an altitude of 27 to 37 kilometres, carrying 360-degree cameras, ozone instruments and radio experiments. Icelandic teams will launch balloons carrying radiosondes, devices that can monitor pressure, temperature, humidity and other atmospheric parameters. The idea is to measure the effects the eclipse has on the planetary boundary layer, the atmosphere’s lowest region where its behaviour is most heavily influenced by warm air rising from the ground.

NASA’s WB-57 high-altitude aircraft can measure polarised coronal light and will fly for the 2026 eclipse. Flying high avoids the problem of cloud cover obscuring the view, while also minimising atmospheric interference. “At high altitude, you can observe infrared light that you can’t observe from the ground,” says French.

During the 2024 total solar eclipse, – an experiment funded by the US National Science Foundation and NASA – used telescopes spread along the path of totality to create a 1-hour timelapse of the corona. This will be repeated during the 2026 eclipse, ahead of a plan to produce a timelapse of the corona with the larger experiment during the longer eclipse that will happen in August 2027. Totality in 2027 will last much longer because the new moon will be closer to Earth, and the path of totality is close to the equator, where Earth effectively bulges out towards the moon.

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“Most of the scientific instruments at an eclipse are not just taking photographs, but collecting measurements of spectra,” says French. Spectroscopy can reveal the speed, temperature and density of plasma in the corona. “When you observe specific spectra, this can give you information on the speed of plasma moving in the sun, and can tell you about the temperature and the density of plasma sloshing around the sun,” he says.

Other eclipse scientists ask a fundamental question: what is the radius of the sun? Because the sun has no solid surface, its visible edge is difficult to define. Yet tiny differences can shift the predicted edge of the path of totality. The , a group of researchers scattered across the world, records flash spectra at the path’s edge to refine eclipse maps and calculate the sun’s actual radius.

The eclipse may also offer a rare chance to test whether aurora can be detected during totality. NASA scientist , founder of citizen science project , will use all-sky cameras to search for faint auroral glow. It is a long shot, but Iceland lies beneath the auroral oval, a region surrounding the geomagnetic North Pole within which the aurora can regularly be seen. Even a non-detection could help constrain whether eclipse darkness can reveal aurora.

Total solar eclipses are brief, vulnerable to clouds and geographically specific, but they open a rare observing window onto the sun’s inner corona – and let scientists try bold ideas without first building a spacecraft.

Discovery Tours: Eclipses

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