Day turned to night: for the first time in twenty years, a total solar eclipse has been visible on the European mainland. On Wednesday evening, a large part of Spain was plunged into darkness as the moon moved in front of the sun and cast its shadow onto the Earth. In Germany and other parts of Europe the sun was only partially covered, yet thousands of people still gathered in many places to watch the celestial spectacle.
Millions of onlookers, among them many tourists who had travelled from abroad, watched in Spain as the sun slowly disappeared behind the moon for roughly two minutes along a strip stretching from Galicia to the Balearic Islands. The light gradually dimmed until all that remained was a glow resembling the end of the day. Only the corona, the ring of light around the sun behind the moon, was still visible.
"This is crazy," said a woman in Tarragona on the Mediterranean coast, before the crowd gathered there broke into applause. Spain had not seen a total solar eclipse for more than a hundred years. Spanish Science Minister Diana Morant had said beforehand that the event was like "a Christmas Day that only comes once every hundred years."
The eclipse began in Europe in the early evening. Shortly before 7pm, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the moon moved in front of the sun in northern Russia. The rare celestial event then extended across the northern hemisphere as far as Greenland, before travelling on southwards over the Atlantic.
In Germany the eclipse was visible first in the north, and a few minutes later in the south of the country. Although the sun was only partially covered in Germany, thousands of people gathered on Berlin's Tempelhofer Feld alone to follow the spectacle from the wide open expanse of the former airport. Shortly after 8pm they began to clap and cheer repeatedly as only a narrow crescent of the sun remained visible. "This is crazy. I've never seen anything like it," a young American tourist told a journalist from the news agency AFP.
At the Zeiss Planetarium in the Prenzlauer Berg district, more than 3,000 people had already assembled before the eclipse began, according to police, prompting officers to appeal on the online service X for people to stop coming. Eclipse glasses were also no longer available, the police added. Even days before the event, the protective glasses — without which doctors warn of serious eye damage when looking at the sun, had become hard to find.
There had been no total solar eclipse on the European mainland for twenty years, and none in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik since 1433. There, however, a thick blanket of cloud and rain covered the sky, so the event could not be seen.
During a solar eclipse the moon moves directly between the sun and the Earth and casts a narrow band of shadow onto our planet. When the sun is completely obscured, a strange twilight sets in, temperatures drop, shadows fall at unusual angles and some animals go to sleep.
Anyone who missed this eclipse will get a fresh opportunity in a year's time: in August 2027, a total solar eclipse will be visible in southern Spain and North Africa. According to the economy ministry, Spain had hoped this year's eclipse would bring hundreds of thousands of additional tourists and extra revenue of 347 million euros.
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