Eclipse 2026: Where, When & How to Watch (Both Hemispheres)
Astronomy Daily: Latest Space NewsAugust 12, 2026x
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Eclipse 2026: Where, When & How to Watch (Both Hemispheres)

In this episodeShadow Day: the only total solar eclipse of 2026 crosses Arctic Russia, Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain today — the first total eclipse over western mainland Europe since 1999 (Spain’s first since 1905, Iceland’s since 1954). Max totality ~2 min 18 s. Reykjavík ~17:48 UT; northern Spain ~18:27–18:33 UT (Sun very low, ~4–10° up). Live via NASA, timeanddate and the Exploratorium. • Where you are: North America gets an afternoon partial (Nova Scotia ~33%, N. Maine ~28%, Montreal ~18%, Boston ~16%, NYC ~9–10%, Toronto ~8%, DC ~10%; Fairbanks ~37% in the morning) — no totality anywhere on the continent, glasses on throughout. Europe outside the path sees a deep evening partial (London ~91%). Australia/SH: not visible directly — watch the streams (~1:30–6:00 am AEST Thu). • Chasing the shadow: NASA’s WB-57 jet flies the path at ~50,000 ft (~740 km/h), extending totality to nearly 3 minutes with four visible/IR cameras (SCIFI) to probe coronal heating, prominences and the solar wind (PI Amir Caspi, SwRI). The Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (A. Des Jardins, Montana State) launches ~86 balloons from Iceland and Spain to measure atmospheric changes. • A star-building magnetic field: ALMA captures the first direct high-resolution image of a twisted, toroidal magnetic field wrapped around a protostellar jet in NGC 1333 IRAS 4A (~960 ly, Perseus cloud), confirming a decades-old prediction of how young stars launch jets and shed spin — the same physics that scales up to black-hole jets (Ching et al., Nature Communications 2026; NSF NRAO/ALMA). • Why worlds turn hellish: UC Riverside’s Stephen Kane argues planetary rotation is an overlooked driver of climate and habitability — slow spin may help tip a world into a Venus-style runaway greenhouse. Measuring true spin is hard because winds can masquerade as rotation; ESA’s PLATO (launch March 2027) could test the idea across hundreds of Venus-like planets (Astronomical Journal, accepted). • Skywatch — both hemispheres: the Perseids peak overnight 12–13 Aug under a genuinely moonless sky (best midnight–dawn; NH-favoured). Southern Hemisphere: evening Venus (mag −4.4, just past dichotomy), the pre-dawn planet line-up, and Comet 10P/Tempel 2. ISO 12312-2 eye-safety line included. Sources • NASA Science — Total Solar Eclipse on August 12, 2026; “NASA Science Soars During August Total Solar Eclipse” • timeanddate; Eclipsophile; NationalEclipse.com; azmth.space — path, contact times, magnitudes • Astronomy.com; Forbes; CBS News — North American partial times & percentages • Space.com; Smithsonian — WB-57 SCIFI campaign & Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project • NSF NRAO / phys.org — Ching et al., “Unveiling dominant toroidal magnetic fields in a protostellar outflow,” Nature Communications (2026) • UC Riverside (news.ucr.edu) / phys.org — S. Kane, planetary rotation & runaway greenhouse (Astronomical Journal, accepted) • EarthSky; Astronomy.com — Perseid peak (moonless), Venus dichotomy

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This episode includes AI-generated content.


00:00:00 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Somewhere over the Arctic this afternoon, the

00:00:03 --> 00:00:06 sun is about to go out. Not for long,

00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 a couple of minutes at most. But for the

00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 first time on mainland Western Europe since

00:00:11 --> 00:00:12 1999.

00:00:13 --> 00:00:15 Avery: And here in the studio, it's the middle of a

00:00:15 --> 00:00:17 Sydney afternoon. So we're gonna watch it the

00:00:17 --> 00:00:20 way most of you will on a screen in the small

00:00:20 --> 00:00:21 hours, wide eyed.

00:00:21 --> 00:00:23 Welcome to Astronomy AstroDailyPod. I'm

00:00:23 --> 00:00:24 Avery.

00:00:24 --> 00:00:27 Anna: And I'm anna. It's Wednesday 12th

00:00:27 --> 00:00:29 August. Today, the only total

00:00:29 --> 00:00:32 solar eclipse of the how to catch it

00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 wherever you are, a NASA jet that chases

00:00:35 --> 00:00:38 the shadow. A magnetic field caught in the

00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 act of building a star. Why some

00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 worlds cook themselves alive. And

00:00:44 --> 00:00:46 tonight, a moonless meteor shower. Let's

00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 go. If you only clock one thing in the

00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 sky this year, it's happening in the next few

00:00:52 --> 00:00:55 hours. Today the moon's shadow falls

00:00:55 --> 00:00:58 across the far north of the planet and gives

00:00:58 --> 00:01:00 a lucky narrow strip of the world a total

00:01:01 --> 00:01:03 solar eclipse. The only one of

00:01:03 --> 00:01:04 2026.

00:01:05 --> 00:01:07 Avery: Give us the geography because this is a

00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 strange one. It doesn't run the usual way.

00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 Anna: It doesn't. Most totalities race

00:01:12 --> 00:01:15 roughly west to east. This one arcs

00:01:15 --> 00:01:18 up and over the pole. It begins at

00:01:18 --> 00:01:20 sunrise over the Taymyr Peninsula in

00:01:20 --> 00:01:23 Arctic Russia, sweeps across the top of the

00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 world and down the eastern side of Greenland,

00:01:26 --> 00:01:29 crosses western Iceland, Reykjavik included,

00:01:30 --> 00:01:32 then runs out over the North Atlantic, clips

00:01:32 --> 00:01:35 a tiny corner of northeastern Portugal and

00:01:35 --> 00:01:38 finishes by crossing northern Spain from

00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 Galicia to the Mediterranean, ending near the

00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 Balearics right at sunset.

00:01:43 --> 00:01:46 Avery: And um, this is a big deal specifically for

00:01:46 --> 00:01:46 Europe.

00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 Anna: A uh, huge deal. It's the first total

00:01:49 --> 00:01:52 solar eclipse over western Mainland Europe

00:01:52 --> 00:01:54 since 11 August

00:01:54 --> 00:01:57 1999, 27 years almost

00:01:57 --> 00:02:00 to the day. For Spain it's the first

00:02:00 --> 00:02:02 since 1905, for Iceland the

00:02:02 --> 00:02:05 first since 1954. People have

00:02:05 --> 00:02:07 booked these spots years out.

00:02:08 --> 00:02:10 Avery: So if I'm standing in the path, what do I

00:02:10 --> 00:02:11 actually get?

00:02:11 --> 00:02:14 Anna: Not long, but unforgettable. Maximum

00:02:14 --> 00:02:17 totality is about 2 minutes and 18

00:02:17 --> 00:02:19 seconds out over the Atlantic near the

00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 centerline. On land it's shorter. In

00:02:22 --> 00:02:24 Reykjavik, totality lands around

00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 17:48 Universal Time. That's

00:02:27 --> 00:02:30 just before six in the evening local and

00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 gives you a bit over a minute. Out on the

00:02:32 --> 00:02:35 Iceland's Snaefelsnes peninsula you do better

00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 then over in northern Spain, totality

00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 falls around 18:27 to

00:02:41 --> 00:02:44 18:33 UT that's

00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 8:27 to 8:33 in the evening,

00:02:46 --> 00:02:48 local evening.

00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 Avery: So the sun's getting low, very low.

00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 Anna: That's the catch. In Spain, the sun sits only

00:02:54 --> 00:02:57 about 10 degrees up on the north coast and

00:02:57 --> 00:03:00 as little as 4 degrees near the Balearic

00:03:00 --> 00:03:03 Sea. Gorgeous if you've got a clean horizon.

00:03:03 --> 00:03:06 But a hill, a forest, a building and you

00:03:06 --> 00:03:08 miss it. And the weather split is almost

00:03:08 --> 00:03:11 poetic. Iceland is climatologically

00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 the cloudier bet, Spain, the sunnier one.

00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 But Spain makes you pay with that low sun.

00:03:17 --> 00:03:19 Avery: Okay, now the part most of our audience

00:03:19 --> 00:03:21 needs, because most of us are nowhere near

00:03:21 --> 00:03:24 that strip, start with North America, our

00:03:24 --> 00:03:24 biggest audience.

00:03:25 --> 00:03:27 Anna: North America gets a genuine partial this

00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 afternoon. No totality anywhere on the

00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 continent, but a real bite out of the sun.

00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 And the further northeast you are, the bigger

00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 the bite. Eastern Canada does best.

00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 Nova Scotia sees around a third of the sun

00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 covered, about 33%. Northern

00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 Maine gets close to 28. Montreal

00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 about 18. Boston around 16,

00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 peaking near 155 in the afternoon

00:03:53 --> 00:03:55 Eastern time. New York around 9 or

00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 10% about 1:54. Eastern

00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 Toronto about 8, Washington D.C.

00:04:01 --> 00:04:04 about 10. And Alaska gets a lovely

00:04:04 --> 00:04:06 one in the morning. Fairbanks around

00:04:07 --> 00:04:08 37%.

00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 Avery: And um, crucially, that's a partial. So the

00:04:10 --> 00:04:11 rules are different.

00:04:12 --> 00:04:14 Anna: Completely different. And I'll say it

00:04:14 --> 00:04:17 plainly, if you're seeing a partial, the sun

00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 is never fully covered, so you must keep

00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 certified eclipse glasses on the entire

00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 time. We'll do the full safety line at the

00:04:25 --> 00:04:27 end, but that's the headline for North

00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 America. Glasses on, start to finish.

00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 Avery: Europe, outside the path, a deep partial

00:04:33 --> 00:04:36 Anna: low in the evening sky. London around

00:04:36 --> 00:04:39 91% covered. Paris, about

00:04:39 --> 00:04:41 92. Berlin 85.

00:04:41 --> 00:04:44 Vienna 87. Dramatic, but

00:04:44 --> 00:04:47 again, partial. So eye protection throughout.

00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 Avery: And then there's us, the Southern Hemisphere,

00:04:50 --> 00:04:51 Australia, New Zealand.

00:04:52 --> 00:04:54 Anna: Be honest with them straight up, we see

00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 nothing of this one directly, not a

00:04:57 --> 00:04:59 sliver. It's an entirely northern

00:04:59 --> 00:05:02 hemisphere event. But, and this is the good

00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 news, you can absolutely watch it live.

00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 NASA time and date and the exploratorium

00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 are all streaming from the path, including

00:05:10 --> 00:05:13 telescope feeds out of Spain in Australian

00:05:13 --> 00:05:16 Eastern time. That coverage runs roughly

00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 half past one to six in the morning Thursday,

00:05:19 --> 00:05:21 with the totality highlights landing

00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 somewhere around three to half past 4m am

00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 AEST, set an alarm, make a

00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 coffee and you'll see the corona in real

00:05:30 --> 00:05:30 time.

00:05:30 --> 00:05:33 Avery: That corona being the whole reason people

00:05:33 --> 00:05:33 chase these.

00:05:34 --> 00:05:37 Anna: That's it for those two minutes. The moon

00:05:37 --> 00:05:39 blocks the blinding disc of the sun and

00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 reveals the corona, the faint, pearly

00:05:42 --> 00:05:45 outer atmosphere we almost never get to see.

00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 It's not just beautiful, it's scientifically

00:05:48 --> 00:05:51 precious. Which, nice segue, is

00:05:51 --> 00:05:54 exactly why NASA is about to chase this

00:05:54 --> 00:05:55 shadow in a jet.

00:05:55 --> 00:05:58 Avery: So while millions look up One NASA team

00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 is going to look sideways at, uh, nearly

00:06:01 --> 00:06:03 50ft. As the eclipse

00:06:03 --> 00:06:06 crosses today, a NASA WB57

00:06:06 --> 00:06:09 high altitude jet will fly along the

00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 path and literally chase the Moon's shadow.

00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 Anna: Why fly it rather than just stand still like

00:06:15 --> 00:06:16 the rest of us?

00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 Avery: Because if you move with the shadow, you

00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 stretch out your totality from the ground.

00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 You get a couple of minutes from that jet.

00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 Cruising at around 740 kilometres

00:06:26 --> 00:06:29 an hour, the team extends your view of

00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 totality to nearly three. In the nose

00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 cone sit four cameras, visible and

00:06:34 --> 00:06:37 infrared, shooting at least 20 frames a

00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 second. The instrument's got a great name.

00:06:40 --> 00:06:43 Sci fi, scientifically calibrated in

00:06:43 --> 00:06:43 flight imagery

00:06:44 --> 00:06:45 Anna: and the science thereafter.

00:06:46 --> 00:06:49 Avery: The corona's biggest riddles. One,

00:06:49 --> 00:06:51 how the corona gets heated to something like

00:06:51 --> 00:06:54 a million degrees when the surface below it

00:06:54 --> 00:06:56 is a mere 5 thousand.

00:06:57 --> 00:06:59 Two, how those great looping prominences

00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 form and hang suspended above the sun. And

00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 three, how material in the corona feeds into

00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 the solar wind that washes over all of us.

00:07:08 --> 00:07:11 The printable investigator is Amir Caspi at

00:07:11 --> 00:07:13 the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.

00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 And his line is lovely. The sun is always

00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 changing. Every eclipse is different. So we

00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 might see something we've never seen before.

00:07:21 --> 00:07:23 Anna: And a, uh, total eclipse gives them something

00:07:24 --> 00:07:25 no spacecraft can.

00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 Avery: Right, exactly. And this is the clever

00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 bit. Space telescopes block the sun's disc

00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 with a little occulting disc called a

00:07:33 --> 00:07:35 coronagraph. But that also hides the inner

00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 corona closest to the surface, the very

00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 region where the heating happens. A, uh, real

00:07:41 --> 00:07:43 eclipse with the moon as a perfect occulture

00:07:44 --> 00:07:46 hands you that inner corona for free,

00:07:46 --> 00:07:48 frying above the clouds. And most of the

00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 water vapour also opens up infrared

00:07:50 --> 00:07:52 wavelengths you can't get from the ground.

00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 These same cameras flew the 2024 eclipse over

00:07:56 --> 00:07:58 North America. The team fixed some

00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 overexposed frames and sped up the Software

00:08:00 --> 00:08:03 so the 2026 data should come back sharper

00:08:03 --> 00:08:04 and faster.

00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 Anna: And it's not just the jet, there's a whole

00:08:07 --> 00:08:08 balloon army.

00:08:08 --> 00:08:11 Avery: There is the NASA supported

00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 nationwide Eclipse Balloon Beijing project

00:08:14 --> 00:08:16 led by Angela Dejardins at Montana State

00:08:16 --> 00:08:19 University is sending students from US

00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 Icelandic and Spanish universities to

00:08:22 --> 00:08:24 launch scientific balloons, around

00:08:25 --> 00:08:27 86 of them from Iceland and Spain.

00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 Before, during and after the eclipse.

00:08:30 --> 00:08:32 They're measuring what happens to the

00:08:32 --> 00:08:34 atmosphere when day suddenly turns to

00:08:34 --> 00:08:37 dusk. The ozone and the so called boundary

00:08:37 --> 00:08:40 layer near the ground that shifts with

00:08:40 --> 00:08:42 temperature and moisture. As NASA's Eclipse

00:08:42 --> 00:08:45 Programme Manager Kelly Couric put it, an

00:08:45 --> 00:08:48 eclipse gives us a vantage point on the sun

00:08:48 --> 00:08:50 we can't get anywhere else in the solar

00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 system. And today, students get to grab

00:08:53 --> 00:08:53 it.

00:08:53 --> 00:08:56 Anna: From the Sun's outer atmosphere to the birth

00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 of a star entirely. And a 30 year old

00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 mystery just got solved. Using the Alma

00:09:02 --> 00:09:04 array in Chile, astronomers have captured the

00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 first direct high resolution image of a

00:09:07 --> 00:09:10 magnetic field wrapped tightly around the jet

00:09:10 --> 00:09:12 streaming out of a still forming star.

00:09:12 --> 00:09:14 Avery: Paint the picture. What does it actually look

00:09:14 --> 00:09:15 like?

00:09:15 --> 00:09:18 Anna: Picture a twisted funnel shaped field, a

00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 corkscrew of magnetism sheathing the gas

00:09:21 --> 00:09:23 that's blasting away from the young star. The

00:09:23 --> 00:09:26 target is a mouthful. NGC

00:09:26 --> 00:09:28 1333 IRS 4A,

00:09:29 --> 00:09:31 a young double star system tucked inside the

00:09:31 --> 00:09:34 Perseus molecular cloud about 960

00:09:34 --> 00:09:37 light years away. And seeing that field wound

00:09:37 --> 00:09:40 around the outflow confirms a prediction

00:09:40 --> 00:09:42 theorists have been making for decades about

00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 how these jets are launched and shaped.

00:09:45 --> 00:09:47 Avery: Why does a baby star even need a jet?

00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 Anna: Beautiful question. It's a survival trick.

00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 As a star gathers material, it also gathers

00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 spin. Too much spin and it would tear itself

00:09:56 --> 00:09:59 apart before it ever finished forming. The

00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 magnetic field and the jet act like a release

00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 valve M they carry away excess material and

00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 angular momentum so the star can keep growing

00:10:07 --> 00:10:10 rather than spinning itself to pieces. This

00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 image shows the mechanism doing its job.

00:10:12 --> 00:10:15 Avery: And there's a bigger echo here, isn't there?

00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 Anna: There is, and this is the part I love. The

00:10:18 --> 00:10:20 same basic physics. A magnetic field

00:10:20 --> 00:10:23 channelling a jet is thought to play out at

00:10:23 --> 00:10:25 wildly different scales across the universe.

00:10:25 --> 00:10:28 From a newborn star like this one, all the

00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 way up to supermassive black holes that fire

00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 jets across entire galaxies. Same

00:10:34 --> 00:10:36 trick, unimaginably different sizes.

00:10:37 --> 00:10:39 The work is led by Tao Chung Ching, a former

00:10:39 --> 00:10:42 Jansky Fellow at the US National Radio

00:10:42 --> 00:10:44 Observatory. Published in Nature

00:10:44 --> 00:10:46 Communications and a small point of pride for

00:10:46 --> 00:10:49 our part of the sky. ALMA sits high in the

00:10:49 --> 00:10:52 Atacama in Chile, very much a Southern

00:10:52 --> 00:10:53 Hemisphere machine.

00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 Avery: Here's a question that sounds simple and

00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 absolutely isn't. Why did Venus,

00:10:58 --> 00:11:00 Earth's twin in size, turn into a furnace

00:11:00 --> 00:11:03 while Earth stayed livable? A planetary

00:11:03 --> 00:11:05 scientist at UC Riverside, Stephen Kane,

00:11:05 --> 00:11:07 thinks a big part of the answer might be

00:11:07 --> 00:11:10 something we routinely overlook. How fast a

00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 planet spins then really,

00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 Anna: why would rotation decide whether a world is

00:11:15 --> 00:11:16 hospitable?

00:11:17 --> 00:11:19 Avery: Because rotation sets how a star's heat gets

00:11:19 --> 00:11:22 spread around a planet. It shapes the winds,

00:11:22 --> 00:11:24 the weather, the way an atmosphere and any

00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 ocean circulate. Earth's roughly 24

00:11:26 --> 00:11:29 hour day keeps the energy moving and the

00:11:29 --> 00:11:31 climate regulated. Spin a world down slow

00:11:31 --> 00:11:34 enough, Kane argues, and you may tip it

00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 toward a runaway greenhouse. Heat pours in,

00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 can't escape, and you end up with Venus, a

00:11:38 --> 00:11:41 uh, crushing atmosphere and a surface hot

00:11:41 --> 00:11:42 enough to melt lead.

00:11:42 --> 00:11:45 Anna: So to test that on other planets, we just

00:11:45 --> 00:11:46 measure how fast they spin.

00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 Avery: That's the rub. It's genuinely hard. In a

00:11:49 --> 00:11:51 paper accepted by the Astronomical Journal,

00:11:51 --> 00:11:54 Kane warns that when you look at a distant

00:11:54 --> 00:11:56 planet, the motion you detect might be its

00:11:56 --> 00:11:59 howling winds, not the solid body underneath.

00:11:59 --> 00:12:02 Exactly the confusion Venus throws at us. The

00:12:02 --> 00:12:04 proposed fix is to observe at several

00:12:04 --> 00:12:06 wavelengths that probe different depths of

00:12:06 --> 00:12:09 the atmosphere and separate the true spin

00:12:09 --> 00:12:09 from the wind.

00:12:10 --> 00:12:11 Anna: And there's a mission coming that could

00:12:11 --> 00:12:13 actually run this experiment at scale.

00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 Avery: There is ESA's Plato, due to launch in

00:12:17 --> 00:12:19 March 2027. It's built to find and

00:12:19 --> 00:12:22 monitor lots of planets. And Cain reckons it

00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 could turn up hundreds of Venus like worlds

00:12:24 --> 00:12:27 if they're all slow rotators. That's a strong

00:12:27 --> 00:12:29 hint that spin really is a switch between a

00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 living world and a hellish one. If they're

00:12:32 --> 00:12:34 all over the place, we look elsewhere. Either

00:12:34 --> 00:12:36 way, a uh, lovely testable idea.

00:12:36 --> 00:12:38 Anna: And the sky isn't done with us today.

00:12:39 --> 00:12:41 Tonight, the night of the 12th into the 13th,

00:12:41 --> 00:12:44 the Perseid meteor shower hits its peak.

00:12:44 --> 00:12:47 And here's the gift. It's genuinely moonless

00:12:47 --> 00:12:49 because the same new moon that's giving the

00:12:49 --> 00:12:52 north its eclipse leaves our meteor sky pitch

00:12:52 --> 00:12:55 dark. These are the best Perseid conditions

00:12:55 --> 00:12:58 in years. Best window between

00:12:58 --> 00:13:01 midnight and dawn. And best of all in the pre

00:13:01 --> 00:13:04 dawn hours of the 13th when the radiant

00:13:04 --> 00:13:06 up in Perseus climbs highest. For the

00:13:06 --> 00:13:09 northern hemisphere, North America

00:13:09 --> 00:13:11 especially, this is your night. Get away

00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 from town lights, look up after midnight.

00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 Give your eyes 20 minutes and let them

00:13:17 --> 00:13:20 wander. No telescope, no glasses,

00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 just a dark sky and patience.

00:13:23 --> 00:13:25 Avery: And um, for those of us down south where

00:13:25 --> 00:13:26 Perseus barely gets off the

00:13:26 --> 00:13:29 Anna: floor, for Cygny and the southern

00:13:29 --> 00:13:32 hemisphere, the Perseus radiant only just

00:13:32 --> 00:13:35 scrapes the northern horizon, so you'll catch

00:13:35 --> 00:13:37 a trickle at best. Don't fret. The

00:13:37 --> 00:13:40 evening sky pays you back right after

00:13:40 --> 00:13:43 sunset. Venus is blazing low in the

00:13:43 --> 00:13:45 west, magnitude minus

00:13:45 --> 00:13:48 4.4, impossible to miss

00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 and just past its half lit

00:13:50 --> 00:13:53 dichotomy phase. If you've a telescope

00:13:53 --> 00:13:56 then before dawn there's a fine lineup of

00:13:56 --> 00:13:59 planets strung across the eastern sky.

00:13:59 --> 00:14:02 And Comet 10P Tempel 2 is

00:14:02 --> 00:14:04 still a southern hemisphere favoured

00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 binocular Target 1 for our part of the world.

00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 Avery: And um, the eclipse times one more time for

00:14:10 --> 00:14:10 everyone.

00:14:11 --> 00:14:14 Anna: For North America it's an afternoon. Partial

00:14:14 --> 00:14:16 Boston peaking about 1:55,

00:14:17 --> 00:14:20 New York about 1:54 Eastern Time.

00:14:20 --> 00:14:23 Glasses on throughout. For Australia and

00:14:23 --> 00:14:25 the wider southern hemisphere it's the live

00:14:25 --> 00:14:28 streams roughly half 1 to 6 in the

00:14:28 --> 00:14:31 morning AEST Thursday with

00:14:31 --> 00:14:34 totality around 3 to half 4am M

00:14:34 --> 00:14:34 Thursday.

00:14:35 --> 00:14:37 And that brings us to the line we never

00:14:38 --> 00:14:41 never look at a partly eclipsed sun without

00:14:41 --> 00:14:44 proper protection. Use eclipse glasses

00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 or a handheld solar viewer that meet the

00:14:47 --> 00:14:48 ISO

00:14:48 --> 00:14:51


00:14:51 --> 00:14:53 standard. Ordinary sunglasses are not

00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 safe and neither is an unfiltered camera

00:14:57 --> 00:15:00 phone, binocular or telescope. If

00:15:00 --> 00:15:02 you're in the path of totality, you may look

00:15:02 --> 00:15:05 with the naked eye only during those brief

00:15:05 --> 00:15:07 seconds when the sun is complet completely

00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 covered and glasses go straight back on the

00:15:10 --> 00:15:13 instant the bright edge returns not in the

00:15:13 --> 00:15:15 path, then it's a partial the whole time.

00:15:16 --> 00:15:18 Protection stays on from start to finish.

00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 Avery: Whatever you catch today a uh, partial, a

00:15:22 --> 00:15:24 stream or the meteors tonight, tell us about

00:15:24 --> 00:15:27 it. Everything lives at astronomydaily

00:15:27 --> 00:15:30 IO the back catalogue, the daily news

00:15:30 --> 00:15:33 feed, the newsletter, and a spot to leave a

00:15:33 --> 00:15:35 review or drop us a line. We're at Astral

00:15:35 --> 00:15:37 AstroDailyPod Pod everywhere.

00:15:37 --> 00:15:40 Anna: We'll be back tomorrow to tell you how Shadow

00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 Day went, the images, the science, and

00:15:43 --> 00:15:46 whatever the sun decided to show us. Until

00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 then, from Avery and from Anna.

00:15:49 --> 00:15:50 Avery: Enjoy the eclipse.

00:15:50 --> 00:15:53 Anna: Mind your eyes and clear skies.