2026 solar eclipse canary islands viewing guide

Plan Your 2026 Solar Eclipse Viewing in the Canary Islands

Plan for the 2026 Solar Eclipse in the Canaries

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) reminds us that while a total eclipse will be visible in parts of mainland Spain on 12 August 2026, the Canary Islands will experience around 70% coverage. Scientific communicator Alfred Rosenberg has prepared a guide to useful tools for planning your observation on each island.

Why Careful Planning is Essential

As the IAC details, “An exceptional event like a solar eclipse should not be approached in an improvised way.” They add that various free websites and programmes allow you to predict what will happen and how the phenomenon will develop, making it easier to assess if your chosen location is suitable for observation.

The upcoming eclipses in 2026, 2027, and 2028 will occur in Spain either at the very end or the very beginning of the event, with the Sun usually positioned close to the horizon (either at sunrise or sunset). For this reason, it is especially important to consider the presence of mountains or other terrain features that might obscure your view. These tools can also be used from and for any location on the planet.

Tools for Finding the Perfect Spot

Solar eclipses, the IAC notes, make it easy to identify suitable and unsuitable observation zones simply by analysing the shadows cast by the surrounding landscape. To evaluate this aspect, you can use the website ShadeMap (shademap.app). This tool allows you to select the geographic area, the day, and the time, and it shows how shadows are projected over time.

The IAC guide gives an example: the 2026 eclipse viewed from the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife will last approximately two hours, from 18:58 (figure 1) until sunset around 20:45. The maximum of the partial solar eclipse will occur at 19:53 (figure 2). At that moment, the eastern slopes of La Palma and El Hierro, and the central-eastern zone of Tenerife, will have no visibility of the Sun and, therefore, of the eclipse.

Visualising the Sky and Landscape

Another tool the IAC recommends is Stellarium, a free, multi-platform software that renders the sky from any specified location at a given date and time. They suggest it is useful to combine this with the web tool PeakFinder (peakfinder.com). This site generates realistic landscapes with the mountains and geographical features surrounding an observation point, making it easy to check the visibility of any astronomical object and determine if it will be hidden by the terrain.

Source

Scroll to Top