On 12 August 2026, elements of Europe skilled a complete photo voltaic eclipse. However hours earlier than the Moon’s shadow swept over Earth, the satellite tv for pc pair making up ESA’s Proba-3 mission created an eclipse artificially – for the sixty fifth time – with out the Moon’s assist.
The Solar’s interior corona seems greenish on this picture taken within the morning of 12 August 2026 by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3. This picture exhibits the corona how observers on the bottom would see it simply hours later by means of a inexperienced filter.
An eclipse with no Moon vital? 60 000 km above Earth, the 2 spacecraft align in excellent formation 150 metres aside. The Occulter spacecraft acts as a synthetic Moon and eclipses the Solar for the Coronagraph spacecraft, which then has an uninterrupted view of the Solar’s corona for hours at a time.
However on 12 August, the Moon didn’t need to be ignored – shortly after this picture was taken, our closest celestial neighbour crossed Proba-3’s area of view, creating a double eclipse.
About two weeks in the past, Proba-3 was observing the Solar from the opposite facet. As a result of it takes the Solar two weeks to rotate midway round its axis, the mission’s coronagraphy picture served as a slightly accurate prediction of what the views can be like on 12 August, each for the mission itself and for observers on the bottom.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals, in addition to many house missions, captured the pure 2026 photo voltaic eclipse: here’s our selection.
[Image description: a square image with the Sun in the centre taken during an artificial solar eclipse. Against a black background, the Sun’s bright body is covered by a black disc, and light green hair-like tendrils extend from the black disc in all directions. Bright green light peeks from behind the black disc’s edge, slowly fading towards the outer edges of the image. On the left side of the black circle’s edge, the green light is brighter and appears almost white.]
