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Total Solar Eclipse on August 12 to Coincide with Perseid Meteor Shower Peak
Western Europe's first total solar eclipse since 1999 will occur on August 12 with totality visible in eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain. The peak of the Perseid meteor shower will follow hours later under new-moon conditions.
Jul 17, 5:00 AM·2m read4 sources
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A total solar eclipse will cross eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain on August 12. The moon will fully cover the sun's disc for a brief period, revealing the solar corona. Solar and atmospheric scientists will observe the event from the ground and from high altitudes.
US, European and Icelandic teams will release balloons carrying instruments into the stratosphere over Spain and Iceland. Balloons launched in Spain will ascend to altitudes between 27 and 37 kilometres while carrying 360-degree cameras, ozone instruments and radio experiments. Icelandic teams will fly radiosondes to record pressure, temperature, humidity and additional atmospheric parameters.
High-altitude aircraft operated by NASA and European agencies will conduct separate missions focused on the corona. The Citizen CATE experiment, supported by the US National Science Foundation and NASA, will deploy telescopes along the path of totality to produce a timelapse sequence of the corona.
“Research groups that have novel ideas can go to an eclipse and take observations without having to bid for tens of millions of pounds’ worth of grants from NASA or the European Space Agency – the barrier to entry is much lower,” solar physicist Ryan French at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado, said.
NASA scientist Liz MacDonald, founder of the citizen science project Aurorasaurus, will operate all-sky cameras in Iceland to search for faint auroral glow during totality. The experiments are designed to measure effects on the planetary boundary layer and to obtain spectra that indicate the speed, temperature and density of plasma in the corona.
A comparable timelapse campaign is scheduled for a longer eclipse in August 2027 using the North African Telescope Eclipse experiment.
The Perseid meteor shower, produced by debris from Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, is already active and will reach its peak on the night of August 12–13. Meteors will enter the atmosphere at approximately 37 miles per second. With a new moon on the same night, observers under dark skies may see up to 100 meteors per hour.
