How do you get ready for the evening of August 12, when the Moon slides across the Sun over half of Europe?
Welcome to FreeAstroScience. We’ve booked Friday, August 8 at 8:00 PM CEST for a free live class, and this invitation tells you what the Moon will do to the Sun five days later and how to join from wherever you happen to be.
FreeAstroScience will hold a free live-streamed class on the August 12, 2026 total solar eclipse on Friday, August 8 at 8:00 PM CEST (20:00), broadcast on the FreeAstroScience Facebook page. Miracle Chibuzor Marcel leads the session, which covers the path of totality from Greenland to Spain and the deep partial eclipse visible from Italy.
Somewhere over the Balearic Sea on the evening of August 12, the Sun will go out while it is still up. S’Arenal, a beach town on Mallorca, gets 1 minute and 36 seconds of totality with the Sun only a few degrees above the water: a black disk where the sunset should be. Then the light comes back.
That picture is why we scheduled a class.
The Moon’s shadow lands on Europe’s doorstep
On Wednesday, August 12, the Moon’s central shadow touches down in the Arctic and sweeps southeast across Greenland, past Iceland, down the open Atlantic, and onto Spain, a small corner of Portugal, and the Balearic Islands. Northern Russia catches it near midday, Iceland in the late afternoon, and Spain just before sunset.
Nowhere does darkness linger. Most of the path gets under two minutes of totality, and the maximum, reached near the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland, is 2 minutes and 18 seconds, so even at its very best the whole show fits inside two and a half minutes of your life. Deepest eclipse comes at 17:46 UTC, which is 19:46 on an Italian clock.
In February we covered the annular ring of fire eclipse over Antarctica, which only two research stations could realistically see. Six months later the geometry has flipped in our favor: this one is total, not annular, and it ends its run on some of the most reachable coastline in Europe.
Star Walk’s viewing guide treats August 12 mostly as a trip to plan, ranking Spanish towns by their seconds of totality. Fair, if you can travel. We’d argue with what that framing implies, though. For the few hundred million people under the partial shadow, the evening is no consolation prize, and treating it as one is how whole countries end up not looking at all.
What will Italy actually see?
Italy gets a deep partial eclipse, low in the western sky, in the last stretch of the day. NASA’s overview lists Italy among the countries where a large fraction of the Sun goes dark. Across western Europe, the Sun will set while still partly eclipsed.
One number is missing from this invitation, and we’d rather admit that than invent it. Neither NASA’s page nor Star Walk’s guide prints an obscuration figure for Rimini or any other Italian city. Working out your own town’s local circumstances is one of the things the class will teach.
If a partly hidden Sun sounds minor, remember the standard people once set for themselves: eighteenth-century astronomers sailed across oceans and through war zones to watch a small dot cross that same star, a story we told in our account of the Venus transit expeditions. You get a comparable view for the cost of stepping onto a balcony.
Joining the live class on August 8
The plan is simple. On August 8 at 8:00 PM CEST we go live on the FreeAstroScience Facebook page. Miracle Chibuzor Marcel leads the session and will take your questions as they arrive, the stream is free, there is nothing to register for, and the replay stays on the page afterward for anyone whose Friday evening is already spoken for.
An evening class needs a plan of its own, and ours is built around the star we spend our lives taking for granted, the subject of our piece asking whether the Sun is a king or just another star. Four things are on the table:
- What an eclipse is, told in plain physics.
- The path of August 12, hour by hour, from the Greenland ice to the Spanish sunset.
- Safe ways to watch, and the one thing never to try with bare eyes.
- Your questions, answered live.
As we post this on Monday, August 3, the class is four days away and the shadow nine. If a ten-year-old lives in your house, sit them down beside you on Friday evening; the class is written for curious people of every age.
A class for a Wednesday shadow
- The class: Saturday, August 8 at 8:00 PM CEST, free, live on the FreeAstroScience Facebook page, with Miracle Chibuzor Marcel.
- The eclipse: Wednesday, August 12, total from Greenland down to Spain, never longer than 2 minutes and 18 seconds.
- From Italy: a deep partial eclipse low in the evening sky, with local numbers worked out together during the class.
We built this class the way we build every page here: hard sky physics, translated for the people it belongs to, in words that need no lecture hall. Come with questions and leave carrying sharper ones, and when the Sun goes dark on Wednesday, keep the one instrument that must never sleep switched on, because a resting reason is an open door. If Friday slips past you, the replay will wait, and come back here on the morning of August 12, when we’ll publish a short viewing guide with eclipse times for Italian cities. FreeAstroScience, Rimini. Gerd Dani.
Sources
- NASA Science (2026). Total Solar Eclipse on August 12, 2026. NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/total-solar-eclipse-on-august-12-2026/
- Star Walk (2026). Total Solar Eclipse of August 12, 2026: Path, Times, Map & Best Places to Watch. Vito Technology. https://starwalk.space/en/news/total-solar-eclipse-august-12-2026
