UK Eclipse Arrives: Europe Watches the Sun Vanish
The Moon will block up to 96% of the Sun over the United Kingdom in what astronomers are calling the most significant solar eclipse seen from British soil since 1999, according to the BBC.
UK Eclipse Arrives: Europe Watches the Sun Vanish
The Moon will block up to 96% of the Sun over the United Kingdom in what astronomers are calling the most significant solar eclipse seen from British soil since 1999, according to the BBC. Parts of Spain, Portugal, Iceland, Greenland, and Russia will experience totality — a complete blackout — while the rest of Europe watches the sky darken in the middle of the day.
The event arrives at a moment when the UK is already deep in a record-breaking summer. The tally of days above 30°C has been broken again, per BBC News, making this the most extreme heat sequence in the country's recorded history. An eclipse cutting sunlight by nearly the full measure, even briefly, will offer an eerie interruption to a summer that has refused to relent.
Scientists have noted the timing is not without irony. A continent baking through temperatures it was never engineered to handle will pause to watch its primary heat source disappear — however temporarily — behind the Moon.
Total eclipses in Europe follow long gaps. The 1999 path crossed Cornwall. Before that, 1954. The next comparable event over British territory will not arrive for decades. Astronomers are urging those in the totality corridor across Spain and Portugal to travel if possible. For the UK, 96% will have to be enough.
Some moments, a city looks up at exactly the right time.
