April 8 was a peak of eclipse excitement. Already the world is looking forward to another peak. And it happens that there is a curious relationship between these successive total solar eclipses.
They are strongly different in most ways. The 2024 eclipse was near the middle of its saros series (138), so it was nearly central. Duration of totality reached a maximum of well over 4 minutes.
The 2026 eclipse is near the end of an older saros series (126), so that its path is mainly across the Arctic, a path of the broad and semicircular kind that looks as if slicing off the top of an egg – the egg being Earth, and its top being its north ecliptic pole. The Moon’s umbra, or central shadow, strikes at a low angle, which is why its footprints along its path are long ellipses. Totality duration reaches a maximum (near the coast of Greenland) not much over 2 minutes.
But the two paths aim as if to end in the same place, so that they come near to overlapping. In 2024, the totally eclipsed Sun was last seen on the evening horizon in the Atlantic off Europe; for Spain, the Sun as it set was still a narrow crescent not quite covered by the slower-setting Moon.
In 2026, the evening end of the wide path of totality favors much of Spain and a small corner of Portugal.
For instance, Valladolid will see the Sun, at altitude 8.7° above the western horizon, totally eclipsed for 1 minute and 28 seconds, centered at 18:30 Universal Time, which is 20:30 by Spanish summer clock time.
We’ll find out more about the eclipse of 841 days from now!
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P.S. I just read all your posts leading up to the April 8 eclipse. I was traveling and not keeping up with email. I wish I had seen them earlier.
Organized tours to see the 2026 total solar eclipse are already selling out.
I hope to live long enough to see the total solar eclipse of 2045 August 12, just a couple of hundred miles from my home. I’ll find someplace scenic with good weather prospects, book years in advance, and plan to stay for at least a week before and a week after the eclipse.
For the 2017 total solar eclipse I stayed in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with a group from my astronomy club. We were there for a few days before the eclipse, and stayed for a couple of days after. I had a much more satisfying experience of the eclipse because I had spent just a few days getting settled and familiar with the rhythms of the place, the sounds of the birds in the morning and evening, etc.
This year I took a tour, stayed in a big fancy hotel in Austin, Texas. The morning of the eclipse we took buses to Fredericksburg, 80 miles west of Austin. We observed the eclipse from a lovely, grassy, wooded retreat. The last bus left Fredericksburg when the second partial phase was barely over. II was the last person on the last bus; several of my fellow tourists gave me side-eye for delaying their return to the hotel. My friend and I flew back to San Francisco early the next morning. My experience of this eclipse felt much more superficial and less satisfying. The birds sang exuberant evening and dawn choruses before and after totality, but I hadn’t heard their regular daily choruses, so I had no basis for comparison.
Another curious link: 2026 Aug 12 17:48 and 2045 Aug 12 17:42.