During the total solar eclipse on 12 August, scientists from around the world will have their eyes – and scientific instruments – on the sun. But even if you aren’t a scientist, you can help in their investigations, both during the eclipse and year-round.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the sun and moon line up just right so that the moon blocks out the entire disc of the sun from the perspective of Earth. It is a huge cosmic coincidence that both the sun and the moon happen to be just the right size and at the right distance to give us such a spectacle, and a scientifically useful one at that.

On 12 August, a total eclipse will be visible over parts of Europe and the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, with a partial eclipse covering much of Europe, Canada, north-west Africa and parts of the US. An eclipse like this one is visible from somewhere on Earth just once every 18 months approximately, so during each eclipse, scientists rush out to gather as much data as they can. Here are some ways that you can help out:

1. Record shadow bands from the path of totality: In the moments before and after a total solar eclipse, strange phenomena called shadow bands billow across the ground. These bands are caused by the combination of Earth’s atmosphere and the hidden disc of the sun – it is similar to the effect that causes more distant stars to twinkle. If you are in the path of totality, all you have to do to see them is set out a white sheet or piece of cardboard perpendicular to the direction of the sun. To , which aims to quantify how shadow bands differ based on altitude and distance from the centre of totality, just set up a camera to film the sheet.

2. Photograph the sun with your smartphone: The sun is very nearly spherical, but it isn’t perfect. One of the best ways to measure its shape with precision is to have lots of pictures taken from lots of different locations – that’s what does. It’s a smartphone app that you can set up and leave running as you enjoy watching the eclipse, and it will take carefully timed pictures to capture a phenomenon called Baily’s Beads, or the diamond ring effect. When the very last of the sun is about to be covered by the moon, the lunar landscape lets through tiny points of light, which shine along its edge. The same happens when the other side of the moon is just about to let the sun shine past it again, and these points of light are Baily’s Beads. When lots of photos of the beads, all precisely geolocated, are combined with a map of the lunar topography, that can give us an extraordinarily precise measurement of how far the disc of the sun is from a perfect circle.

3. Measure the darkening of the sky during the eclipse: Even if you are only going to see a partial eclipse, you can still help with scientific research. The Gaia4Sustainability project requires a little bit more equipment and set-up time, but once you have it sorted, you can leave it running all year round and keep collecting useful data. It consists of a small device with a bunch of sensors on it to measure the brightness of the sky and other meteorological factors, and the overarching goal of the programme is to measure light pollution so we can better understand its effects. But during the eclipse, the same sensors can be used to , and the more different spots the team has data from, the more they will be able to learn about atmospheric dynamics during eclipses.

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4. Hunt for sun-grazing comets: As is the case for pretty much all astronomical events, a huge portion of the world won’t be able to see August’s total eclipse at all. Not to worry! There are still ways to get involved in solar science. In the , you can download satellite pictures of the sun and look for moving objects on its outskirts. Some of the objects will be comets skimming past the sun, and once researchers know those comets are there, they can do more detailed research. A huge proportion of the known comets were discovered through Sungrazer. All it takes is a computer, an internet connection and some spare time.

5. Join a DEB observation team for next year: If you want to do something a bit more involved, the might be more up your street. It’s an scheme where teams receive training and some relatively basic equipment to observe eclipses across the path of totality, building up a huge repository of data that can then be used to study the evolution of the corona, the outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere. Because of the training required, it is too late to join or create a DEB team for this year, but if you are going to be able to spot the 2027 eclipse that will sweep over northern Africa, you can sign up ahead of time.

Even during the eclipse, you shouldn’t look directly at the sun without a solar filter or eclipse glasses to protect your eyes.

Where can I see the eclipse?

What happens during a total solar eclipse?

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If you are planning to enjoy the total solar eclipse on 12 August with your children, here are a few activities you can do with them before and during the eclipse, to help them understand what causes a solar eclipse and get the most out of the experience.

1. Build an eclipse viewer

On the days leading up to the eclipse, you and your children can get excited about the big event by building an eclipse viewer. There are a few ways to do this – the first of which is a simple pinhole camera using two pieces of paper. Cut a hole in one piece of paper and cover it with aluminium foil, then poke a small hole in the foil. On the day of the eclipse, hold the paper up to let the sun beam through the hole and it will project a version of the eclipse onto a second piece of paper you place on the ground.

A slightly more complicated version involves a cereal or shoe box, placing paper at one end and cutting two holes in the other end. Over one of the two holes, you place some tin foil and, again, pierce it so that the sunlight can get through. More details on how to make both versions here.

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2. Build a solar eclipse model

Another activity that can be done ahead of the eclipse is building, or acting out, a model of the sun, moon and Earth to understand what a solar eclipse is. To build it, all you need is three sticks and three balls to place on top of the sticks. You can paint them or colour them in so that they resemble the sun, moon and Earth. Make sure the sun is bigger than the moon. Then, you can show your kids what an eclipse is by placing the sun in the centre, and moving Earth around the sun and the moon around Earth. When the three line up, with the moon in between the sun and Earth, we get a solar eclipse. When the moon is on the other side of Earth from the sun, we get lunar eclipses.

Your kids can also act out a solar eclipse. Give one of them a torch or flashlight, making them act as the sun, and ask them to shine the torch on a wall. The other, who is the moon, can move around until they block the torch light. They can both play around with moving forwards and backwards, to show why the distances between the moon, Earth and sun matter when it comes to eclipses.

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3. Pop a balloon using sunlight

This is something that can be done on any sunny day. But on the day you are waiting for the total eclipse, you can show your kids how to use the power of sunlight to pop a balloon. You need a balloon and a magnifying glass for this activity. Blow up the balloon and then hold the magnifying glass up so that it magnifies the sunlight onto the balloon. Wait for a few minutes and, eventually, the balloon will pop. You can also make this more exciting by blowing up a white balloon inside a black one, and doing the same trick. The black balloon should pop, leaving the white balloon intact inside. You can use this to explain how black surfaces absorb sunlight, while light surfaces reflect them.

4. Play with shadows

On the day of the eclipse, while you are waiting for totality, the partial eclipse phase will last a few hours. You and your kids can get excited about the eclipse by noticing how shadows change, and playing around with this. If you have a tree nearby, look at the shadows it casts on the ground throughout the eclipse and you will see that they start to look like a sun with a bite taken out of it. This also works by crossing your fingers over each other and casting shadows on the ground. Another way to show the eclipse through shadows is using a colander, or anything with small holes in it. As the eclipse progresses, the shadows cast will start to take on the shape of the eclipse. You can punch a series of holes in a piece of paper to spell out a word or your kids’ names in these crescent shapes.

5. Draw shadows

This is another activity that can be done in the hours leading up to and after totality, again making the most of the interesting shadows created by a partially eclipsed sun. You can lay a big white piece of paper or sheet on the ground, and ask your kids to draw the shadows cast by different objects. If you do this at the start of the partial phase, and again closer to totality, they will be able to see how these shadows change as the eclipse progresses. You should notice that, in the lead-up to totality, shadows become much clearer as the amount of ambient light is reduced.

The following is an extract from our monthly Launchpad newsletter, in which resident space expert Leah Crane journeys through the solar system and beyond. You can sign up for Launchpad for free here.

It was 1919 when the moon did a perfectly natural thing – blocked our view of the sun – and changed our understanding of the universe forever. Astronomer Arthur Eddington was watching from the African island of Príncipe, observing the positions of stars and planets that became visible during the eerie daylight darkness. With most of the sun’s light dimmed, he was able to see how light from distant stars warped as it was deflected by our sun’s gravitational pull, an effect called gravitational lensing.

He confirmed his sightings with those of another expedition in Brazil, and these observations offered some of the first proof for Albert Einstein’s relatively new theory of general relativity. This description of how massive objects warp the fabric of space-time is now considered foundational, but at the time it was a revelation. It changed everything about how we think about gravity and the cosmos.

It also resulted in my of all time, published in The New York Times later that year: “LIGHTS ALL ASKEW IN THE HEAVENS; Men of science more or less agog over results of eclipse observations. EINSTEIN THEORY TRIUMPHS Stars not where they seemed or were calculated to be, but nobody need worry.”

“Nobody need worry” might seem a bit over the top, but watching a total solar eclipse can indeed make you feel inexplicably nervous. I saw my first one in 2017. It was absolutely unforgettable. You might think that an eclipse is just like an overcast day with a cloud drifting in front of the sun – after all, what’s happening is simply the moon passing in front of the sun and casting a shadow on Earth – but it’s astonishingly different.

The first thing you’ll notice during a total eclipse is the shadow of the moon rushing over the ground towards you at speeds in excess of 2400 kilometres per hour. The area of shadow is quite wide – during the April 2024 eclipse it was up to 185 kilometres wide, but that changes slightly based on the exact orientations of the sun and moon. As the shadow grows near, the moon appears to take a bite out of the sun, and there’s a strange quality to the light, as if a fog has fallen.

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Then, suddenly, it goes dark. This is totality. Temperatures drop by up to 10 degrees. The only light comes from the sun’s outermost layer, called its corona, which ripples beyond the silhouette of the moon. It becomes so dark that some stars are visible in the sky. Many animals, including birds and insects, understandably seem to think that it’s nighttime, so the otherworldly twilight goes quiet except for the chirping of nocturnal insects that have awoken. I can’t say how you will feel, but for me it was a mix of awe and a strange, primal terror – the sun disappeared, and while my mind knew why, my body panicked at its loss.

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This seems to be a fairly common reaction, and not only in humans. Researchers studying animals during past total eclipses have found that while some simply went about their evening routines early, many of them showed signs of anxiety, running aimlessly or huddling together during totality.

Then, after just a few minutes, totality recedes just as quickly as it arrived. The shadow rushes away, the sun comes back out, and the birds and insects resume their chirping. The astronomers look up from their solar telescopes, groggy but excited at the treasure trove of data they’ve gathered.

Over the thousands of years humans have been observing solar eclipses, we’ve learned some pretty fascinating things. With the disc of the sun covered by the moon, its faint corona becomes visible, making an eclipse the perfect time to study the outer reaches of the sun. For example, scientists first discovered helium during a total solar eclipse. Eclipses are also the best times to observe the plumes of radiation and matter emanating from the surface of the sun through the corona. The corona itself is quite strange, and there’s plenty left to unravel about how it works – despite being far from the sun’s central fusion, the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the sun’s surface, and we still don’t know why.

Even if you’re not studying the sun’s mysterious layers, seeing a total solar eclipse is completely worth it. Those newspaper editors had it right more than a century ago: it’ll leave you more or less agog.

If you are planning to watch the solar eclipse on 12 August this year – whether you are in the path of totality or not – you will need some equipment to enjoy it fully.

The most important rule during an eclipse is not to look at the sun directly. The only time you can do so is during totality, the few minutes during which the sun’s light is entirely blocked by the moon. But part of the fun of an eclipse is the few hours on either side of totality in which you can watch the moon slowly creep across the sun.

You can use special solar filters, including eclipse glasses, to look at the sun directly. Or you can also see the eclipse using simple viewers made from just a few things that you probably have lying around. Here is how to make two kinds of eclipse viewer.

How to make a pinhole camera

For this viewer, all you need is some paper, aluminium foil, scissors and a pen. Cut a hole in the middle of one piece of paper, and cover it in foil. Stick the foil in place and punch a small hole in the middle of it using a pen, needle or other sharp object. On the day of the eclipse, all you have to do is hold this up to the sun and place a second piece of paper on the ground underneath. A little bright dot will appear on the second piece of paper – this is a projection of the sun. As the eclipse progresses, and the moon covers more of the sun, you will see the shape of the dot change.

How to make a box eclipse viewer

The second kind of eclipse viewer works in the same way, but the projection appears inside a box instead of on the ground. For this, you need paper, foil, scissors and a cardboard box – a cereal box or shoe box will work well.

Line one inner side of the box with white paper. Then, cut two holes in the opposite side, spacing them far apart. Tape a piece of foil over one hole and poke a small hole in it. The other hole will be where you look through.

On the day of the eclipse, hold the viewer up to your eye, with the sun behind you. A projection of the sun should appear inside the box, on the white paper you lined it with.

Discovery Tours: Eclipses

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How to photograph a total solar eclipse using your smartphone

Discovery Tours: Eclipses

Explore our tours and cruises designed to help you make the most of experiencing awe-inspiring solar eclipses in handpicked locations around the world.

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How to photograph a total solar eclipse using a camera

How to photograph a partial solar eclipse

In 331 BC, the Macedonian warlord Alexander the Great marched his army into the territory of the Achaemenid Empire and its king Darius III. Alexander went into the battle highly confident, partly because he believed there had been a good omen: a a few days before, on . The Battle of Gaugamela, in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan, ended in a decisive victory for Alexander. Darius fled for his life, and Alexander soon took over the entire Achaemenid Empire. That’s one powerful lunar eclipse.

From our perspective, it is easy to look at such stories and dismiss ancient peoples’ ideas about phenomena like eclipses as ignorant and superstitious. But careful examination of ancient texts and oral traditions reveals that people understood something of the mechanics of the solar system and even had some ability to predict eclipses.

Mesopotamian astronomy

The oldest known written records of astronomical phenomena, including eclipses, come from Mesopotamia, according to at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand in her 2011 book .

Montelle describes a set of several dozen cuneiform tablets known as the Enūma Anu Enlil, 13 of which contain information about lunar and solar eclipses, compiled between 2000 and 1600 BC. The main purpose of the tablets seems to have been to alert the king about omens. In the process, the astronomers began to see patterns. For example, they recognised that lunar eclipses only occur during a full moon and solar eclipses during a new moon. Later, Assyrian astronomers may have noticed that lunar eclipses tend to recur either every six months or after a longer interval.

These early astronomers faced two major challenges in predicting eclipses. The first was that eclipses do recur in predictable ways, but only over very long timescales. Near-identical eclipses occur every 6585.3 days, or just over 18 years: . To spot this 18-year saros cycle, you need decades of observations, and a good calendar to boot.

Secondly, eclipses are never visible from the whole of Earth’s surface. The eclipse that comes 18 years after the last one might only be visible from the other side of Earth. Confined to one corner of the planet, the Mesopotamians only knew about the eclipses that were seen from their area – giving them an incomplete picture.

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These difficulties were less pronounced for lunar eclipses, which can be seen from Earth’s entire night side and often last over an hour. In contrast, solar eclipses are only visible along a narrow band of Earth’s surface and last mere minutes. Lunar eclipses are inherently more predictable, which is why Mesopotamian astronomers were already spotting patterns in them.

Mayan eclipse records

Similar stories played out on the other side of the planet, for instance in the Maya society of Mesoamerica. The Maya had an elaborate religion that included ideas about cosmology.

One of the most illuminating Mayan artefacts is a painted book called the Dresden Codex, named for the city in Germany where it is housed. It was probably created around AD 1210, perhaps in the Mayan city of Chichʼen Itzaʼ. In her 1999 book , at the University of Florida described a series of eclipse tables in the Dresden Codex. The tables seem to describe time intervals in which eclipses could occur, serving as predictions.

Recognising that the sun was essential for their survival, Mayan astronomers viewed eclipses as threatening. In some traditions, the end of the world would begin with an eclipse.

Nevertheless, there were limits. “The Dresden predictions are only accurate to the day, and they only indicate that the Maya calculated that somewhere on Earth there would be an eclipse on that date,” says Milbrath. Like the Mesopotamians, the Maya were unable to predict where on Earth eclipses would be visible.

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In subsequent centuries, astronomer-priests became good enough at predicting eclipses that they may have got sneaky about it.

In the early 1500s in the city-state of Tenochtitlan, in what is now Mexico, Mexica people (sometimes called Aztecs) carved a large circular stone. Now known as the Aztec calendar stone or sun stone, its densely packed symbols encode information about cyclical creation and destruction, including imagery of the sun and moon.

In , Milbrath argued that some of the imagery relates to a solar eclipse. She suggested the central image is the death of the sun god Tonatiuh during an eclipse, which was associated with the end of the world. In her view, the stone predicts on a particular day of the year.

However, there was never an eclipse on this day during Aztec rule and there won’t be until 2078. Milbrath says this revelation, shown through , suggests astronomer-priests were trying to ensure their own long-term position by predicting a cataclysm they knew wouldn’t happen, but which they could use to scare the populace.

We know all of this because these cultures had writing. But what about societies that didn’t?

Eclipses in oral cultures

Understanding and predicting eclipses looks much harder if your society doesn’t have writing. Keeping track of when and where eclipses have happened would be tricky enough; spotting patterns and using them to predict future eclipses sounds like a tall order. Nevertheless, there is evidence that some non-literate societies pulled it off – at least for lunar eclipses.

at the University of Melbourne in Australia has spent years studying the astronomical knowledge of Aboriginal Australians. He summed up his findings in his 2022 book , co-authored with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders.

When Hamacher started, the popular belief was that Aboriginal Australians had “some stories and names for stuff”, but no “real astronomy”. “It didn’t take 10 seconds of looking into it to realise that’s total rubbish,” he says.

In a 2011 study, Hamacher and his colleague described several dozen . Like the Maya, they often viewed eclipses as threatening. But they also understood something of the mechanics.

For instance, the Pintupi people of the Central desert said a solar eclipse was caused by Pira (the moon man) covering the sun, either with his hand or body. “There were so many Aboriginal traditions that described this event as being when the moon covered up the sun,” says Hamacher. This is striking because the moon isn’t visible before a solar eclipse. “People know where celestial objects are even when you can’t see them.”

In a chapter of his book, written with Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson of the Euahlayi Nation, Hamacher describes the Zugubau Mabaig (“astronomers”) of the western Torres Strait Islands. A key duty of a Zugubau Mabaig was to perform a ceremony called Melpal Mari Pathanu (“the ghost has taken the spirit of the moon”) during an eclipse. The Zugubau Mabaig recited the names of the Torres Strait Islands until the moon emerged.

Crucially, the ceremony was planned in advance, according to a man named David Bosun whose father was a Zugubau Mabaig. “Which means people had to predict when that lunar eclipse [was] going to occur,” says Hamacher.

We don’t know how the Zugubau Mabaig predicted the lunar eclipses: a lot of Aboriginal Australian astronomical knowledge was lost during European colonisation. However, Hamacher says one element that may have helped is how durable oral traditions can be.

In a study published in November 2023, he and his colleagues studied . The traditions include a description of the flooding of the land bridge that once connected Tasmania to mainland Australia, about 12,000 years ago. They also refer to the star Canopus as being located near the southern celestial pole, which was the case about 14,000 years ago.

“Now that we’re understanding how oral tradition works a bit better, we know that huge bodies of knowledge can be committed to memory and they can last for thousands of years,” says Hamacher. This may help explain how societies without writing could nevertheless predict phenomena as intermittent as eclipses.

Predicting eclipses may seem like an esoteric skill for hunter-gatherer societies, but Hamacher says we shouldn’t be surprised. “The sky is how you measure time,” he says. “I mean really, how do you measure time without the sun, moon or stars?” Studying it offered ways to keep track of crucial cycles like tides and animal migrations. “Astronomy is always something that ancient cultures would have figured out how it works, because it would be necessary to thrive and survive.”

There is no experience in life like witnessing a total eclipse of the sun. For a few moments, the sky goes dark, the air gets cold and the stars come out in the middle of the day. Some people will go through life never seeing one, but eclipse chasers like me can’t get enough.

The thrill of anticipating the next total eclipse comes from the fact that each one is totally unique. They can last anywhere from a single second to over 7 minutes, and they happen over varying types of geography and geology, usually over the sea.

Just before, during and after the magical minutes of totality, those in the path of the eclipse should look out for a range of phenomena. Clear skies allowing, here’s what to expect from a total solar eclipse:

Sunspots being covered by the moon

At the moment, the sun is in the most active part of its cycle, called solar maximum, which lasts between 11 and 17 years. This means magnetic activity is as high as it gets, causing visible sunspots on the sun’s surface. If these dark, cool, magnetically complex regions are large enough, they can be seen at any time through eclipse glasses. Watching them gradually being covered by the moon during an eclipse is an interesting sight, even for those outside the path of totality.

Shadow bands on the ground

Between a couple of minutes and about 30 seconds before the sun becomes totally eclipsed, the from its surface, called the photosphere, comes from only a slim crescent. When this happens, it is sometimes possible to see wavy lines moving swiftly across light-coloured surfaces. “A [bed] sheet or other white-ish surface placed on the ground may show shadow bands,” says at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “These are due to that sliver of photospheric light that travels through our atmosphere and essentially ‘twinkles’ in roughly parallel bands.” Whether they become visible depends on the amount of turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere.

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Darkness, Baily’s beads and the first diamond ring

Just before totality, the final 0.1 per cent of the sun disappears and the light levels crash. Now come the beads. “In the few seconds before and after totality, one may see Baily’s beads as the last bits of the sun can be seen shining through the moon’s irregular surface,” says Maloney. The final bead shines like a jewel for a second, just as the sun’s corona appears, creating a brief “diamond ring” effect around the moon. It is safe to look at the diamond ring without eclipse glasses, but most observers miss it because they still have them on.

Solar corona

Here it comes – one of the most glorious sights in all of nature. “During totality, when the sun’s photosphere is eclipsed, the other parts of the sun’s atmosphere, the white corona and the pink-purple chromosphere, become visible,” says Maloney. Darkness has arrived and you can safely remove your eclipse glasses and look with your naked eyes at the corona, which is expected to be spiky and star-like because the sun is nearing its most active phase of its cycle. You will see wispy extended tendrils in the corona, if you have binoculars.

The ambitious plans to study the sun during April’s solar eclipse

Solar scientists have been preparing for years for a 4-minute window, during the total solar eclipse on 8 April, in which they will study the sun's corona

Pinkish-red chromosphere and prominences

At the onset and just before the end of totality, you will see the chromosphere, the lower region of the sun’s atmosphere, as a pinkish band that disappears mid-eclipse and remerges on the other side as the moon moves across the sun. You are also likely to see prominences, pinkish-red towers, or loops of plasma and magnetic field structures protruding from the corona visible around the moon.

The second diamond ring

The most impactful diamond ring effect comes at the end of totality. Tiny beads of sunlight appear between the moon’s mountains and valleys before merging into one bright diamond ring, the appearance of which marks the end of totality. It is safe to look at for a few seconds, but as daylight returns it is necessary to put eclipse glasses back on if you want to continue looking at the partial phases.

As totality ends, shadow bands can sometimes be seen again. You will have at least another hour to watch the sun, and any sunspots, slowly being uncovered – with your eclipse glasses back on, of course.