August 12 eclipse: a partial view from Serbia, at sunset
The Moon's shadow crosses Greenland, Iceland and Spain on August 12. From Serbia the Sun is only partly covered, low over the western horizon, minutes before it sets.
A total solar eclipse falls on Wednesday, August 12, the first one visible from mainland Europe since August 11, 1999. The Moon’s shadow starts near the North Pole, runs across northern Russia, Greenland, Iceland and the Atlantic, and comes ashore in northern Spain and a small corner of Portugal. It covers the 8,260 kilometre track in roughly an hour and a half. Serbia sits well outside that band. What the country gets is a partial phase, low over the western horizon, in the last minutes before sunset.
Totality peaks at 2 minutes and 18 seconds west of the Icelandic coast, over open water. In Spain it lasts about a minute, because the Sun is already dropping toward the horizon by then. According to NASA, the partial phase reaches Alaska and Siberia, most of Canada, the northern United States, much of Europe and northwestern Africa. Obscuration runs from 94 percent in Dublin and 83 percent in Oslo, through 18 percent in Montreal and 9 percent in New York, down to 2 percent in Norfolk, Virginia.
Spain’s last mainland total eclipse was on April 17, 1912, two days after the Titanic sank, leaving the Canary Islands aside.
How much of the eclipse is visible from Serbia?
Local figures differ, and they have to be kept apart, because they do not measure the same quantity. N1 reports that the Moon will cover about 27 percent of the solar disc over Belgrade, about 35 percent over Novi Sad and about 43 percent over Subotica, the highest figure in the country. Astronomski magazin gives 15 to 20 percent of the solar diameter for Vojvodina and northwestern Serbia, which works out to 14 to 19 percent of the disc area, dropping to a few percent toward the eastern border.
Percentage of diameter and percentage of disc area are two different measurements, so the numbers cannot be lined up as if they described the same thing. What they agree on is the direction: coverage is greatest in northern Vojvodina and falls off toward the southeast.
In Novi Sad the partial phase begins around 19:25, reaches maximum around 20:17, and the Sun sets a few minutes later. The end of the eclipse happens below the horizon and cannot be seen at all. That makes an unobstructed western view the whole game, from open country or high ground. A terrace facing any other direction shows nothing.
What the science teams are doing that afternoon
NASA and the European Space Agency are launching more than 60 high-altitude balloons from Spain and Iceland to measure what the passing shadow does to the atmosphere. NASA is also sending a high-altitude jet carrying four cameras that record the solar corona at nine wavelengths. Because the aircraft flies along the shadow’s track, totality stretches to about three minutes for the crew.
Angela Des Jardins of Montana State University explained to the Associated Press why so much hardware is aimed at an event that nowhere lasts longer than two and a half minutes:
A couple of minutes isn’t a lot of time, but it’s still plenty to affect the atmosphere.
Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute made the same point: “It’s true the eclipse is short, but it’s still incredibly valuable.” ESA will broadcast from the Javalambre Observatory and from Leon, while the Proba-3 satellite pair, which manufactures an artificial eclipse in orbit, will attempt measurements before and after the real one. NASA’s live coverage starts at 1:15 p.m. Eastern time.
The Perseids on the same night
The night of August 12 to 13 is also the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. The Moon is new and adds no glare, so dark sites should yield 30 to 50 meteors an hour. Anyone who drives out of town in Vojvodina for the sunset can stay put for the meteors without moving again.
Eye protection is not optional
The partial phase may be watched only through glasses carrying the ISO 12312-2 mark. Ordinary sunglasses, smoked glass and X-ray film do not protect the retina. Telescopes, binoculars and cameras need a proper solar filter fitted over the front aperture, never on the eyepiece. Projecting the Sun’s image onto a screen behind the eyepiece remains the safest method of all.
Everything that puts this eclipse into a research programme, the corona, the temperature drop, the disturbance in the ionosphere, belongs to the band of totality rather than to the partial phase seen from Serbia. Nothing will go dark here on August 12, and no corona will appear. A bitten-off solar disc over the western horizon is the whole show, and a brief one.
The next chance is closer than it looks. Spain gets another total eclipse on August 2, 2027, with a maximum of 6 minutes and 23 seconds, followed by an annular one on January 26, 2028. For this latitude the lesson from 1999 still holds: totality is not something you wait for at home, it is something you travel to.
