Together with a friend we enjoyed the total solar eclipse on 2026-08-12 in northern spain, on a side-peak of the small mountain “Peña Perico” near Cistierna; here.
The experience was surreal.
Most notably, for me it was the following:
Short before totality, the process of getting darker was so quick
that the change was directly experienceable. Then, suddenly, in
totality: Experience changed completely. On the twilight sky, it was
like a hole that was punched directly into the sky, and the hole was
encircled by some illumination.
And in the same time the experience got “static” (changes were so slow
that not directly experiencable, only by comparison).
During totality, different shades of twilight were moving along the sky, and short before and after one could also see a bit shadow moving in the hinterland.
During totality, cicadas (or what seemed like that) started to make their noises; and shortly after “morning” birds shortly began to sing.
100% eclipse is a big qualitative difference to 99% eclipse: When there is still a little bit of sun shining past the moon, this is so much brighter than what you can see in totality and outshines everything. The surreal experience I described above only happens at real totality.
I did not take any pictures – on the internet are some, and none of those really catch how the “hole in the sky” looked like in reality: It looked much more like a hole than in the pictures.
For an impression:
(DISCLAIMER: None of those linked pictures are taken by myself.
Copyright to the photographers. Those pictures are only linked here, not
served from my website. Klicking on the picture leads to the original
website where they are embedded. Linked content shows the opinion of the
authors of the linked content and is not necessarily my
opinion.)
¹Archive: web.archive.org.
²Archive: web.archive.org,
archive.ph.
