Partial Solar Eclipse

The total solar eclipse of 12 August 2026 drew the Moon’s shadow across the Arctic, eastern Greenland and Iceland before it reached northern Spain at sunset — the first totality seen from mainland Spain since 1905, and from Iceland since 1954. Edinburgh sat well north of the track and saw a deep partial instead, with roughly 96% of the solar disc covered at maximum and the Sun already low in the northwest, its light reddened by the long path through the atmosphere near the horizon. The thin crescent here is what was left of the photosphere at that point. It is still an enormously bright object: even 4% of the Sun’s disc outshines the full Moon thousands of times over, which is why a deep partial never delivers the abrupt night-time darkness of totality, only a strange flat dimming and a drop in temperature. The last comparable eclipse from here was the 20 March 2015 partial; the next total solar eclipse visible from mainland Britain is not until 23 September 2090. Scotland was clouded over for most of the evening, and this was caught through a break that lasted a few minutes.