Total Solar Eclipse of August 2, 2027

What a total eclipse is like

For a little over an hour, the Moon takes a bigger and bigger bite out of the Sun and you barely notice: the light slowly fades and turns strange, shadows get sharper and it cools down. In the last few seconds everything happens at once: the shadow rushes in from the western horizon, the Sun shrinks to a few beads of light along the Moon’s edge (Baily’s beads) and one last flash, the diamond ring. Then the corona appears, the Sun’s atmosphere, which you never get to see any other way; Venus and the brightest stars come out, and there’s a sunset all around the horizon.

Outside the path there’s no totality, however much of the Sun the Moon covers: with 98% covered, as in Seville, it’s still daytime, you can’t see the corona and you can’t look without eclipse glasses. That’s why it’s worth getting into the path, even if it’s just a few miles.

How to watch it safely

• Certified eclipse glasses (ISO 12312-2), from a store you trust. Sunglasses, X-ray film and smoked glass don’t protect your eyes.
• Never through binoculars, a telescope or a camera viewfinder without a solar filter on the front. The filter always goes on the front, never on the eyepiece.
• Only during totality, and only inside the path, can you look without glasses. As soon as the first flash of sunlight returns, glasses back on.

Before you rely on these times. They’re estimates, and “Your eclipse” is an experimental tool, still in development. The software, your phone or your computer can fail for reasons beyond our control: the battery, power saving, a system update, silent mode or the device’s clock. Have a plan B: the times written down on paper and a separate alarm, and check the figures against official sources. Protecting your eyes and your gear is your responsibility. More in our legal notice (in Spanish).

How to photograph it

The most important thing: practice first. You can photograph the Sun through a filter any day, so you get to August 2 with your focus, framing and sequence already tested.

• The partial phases, with a sheet of ND 5.0 solar filter film on the front of the lens, at ISO 100 and around 1/500 s at f/8 (it depends on your gear: test it).
• Totality, without the filter: a bracketed series from 1/1000 s to 1 s. The short ones bring out the pink prominences on the edge; the long ones, the faintest streamers of the corona. Blended together like an HDR, you get the whole corona.
• Focal length: the Sun is half a degree across, and the corona two or three times that. With 400–800 mm on an APS-C camera you fill the frame; with a wide-angle lens, you capture the landscape and the shadow on the horizon.
• Let the camera do the shooting. With an intervalometer or an automated sequence, the camera works while you watch. It’s only a few minutes, and you don’t get a second chance.
• Get a heads-up. Taking the filter off a few seconds before the diamond ring, and not earlier, is the hardest part: the spoken countdown in the Astrolarius app calls it to the second (in Spanish for now; English is coming before the eclipse).

Spain’s eclipses: 2026, 2027 and 2028

Spain is in the middle of a run that won’t come back for a long time: the total eclipse of August 12, 2026, at sunset, in the north; this one on August 2, 2027, in mid-morning, in the south; and the annular eclipse of January 26, 2028, with the "ring of fire" setting in the west over Andalusia and the east coast. All the upcoming eclipses, meteor showers and planet oppositions, in astronomical events 2027–2028.

Frequently asked questions