Events

Two meteor showers reach their peak on the night of July 30: the Southern Delta Aquariids and the Alpha Capricornids. In a good year that’s a fine reason to drive up to Troodos and lie back for a couple of hours. This is not a good year. The Buck Moon turns full on July 29 at 14:36 UT, and two nights later it’s still 96% lit and up from dusk to dawn, parked in the same corner of the southern sky the meteors come from. The plan, then: don’t waste a special trip on July 30. Learn what these two showers are, catch a few of the brighter ones in the darker nights beforehand, and save your effort for August 12, when the Moon disappears entirely. ...

From my balcony in Nicosia I’ll see nothing on August 12. The Moon’s shadow doesn’t reach the eastern Mediterranean, so from Cyprus the Moon never crosses the solar disc at all. This is the guide I’d hand a friend who can get themselves somewhere the eclipse actually happens, whether that’s the path of totality across northern Spain or a deep partial from a back garden in London. One rule matters more than everything below it: until the Sun is 100% covered, you look through a certified solar filter or you don’t look at all. Not at 90 percent, not at 99. And if you aren’t standing inside the narrow path of totality, that means filters on for the whole eclipse, first bite to last. Everything else here is built around that line. ...

The path of totality on August 12 sweeps across northern Spain from Galicia to the Balearic Islands. Every region inside the path delivers totality — but the Sun sits between 2° and 11° above the western horizon when it happens, and that changes everything about where you should stand. At 10° altitude the Sun is about one fist-width above the horizon at arm’s length. At 5° it’s half a fist. At 2° you’d lose it behind a two-storey building from 100 m away. One badly placed apartment block, one hilltop in the wrong direction, one row of pines — and you miss totality entirely. ...

On August 12, 2026, at 18:28 UT, the Moon’s shadow will touch down on the coast of Galicia in northwestern Spain. For about 1 minute 50 seconds in Oviedo — less in Bilbao, more in León — the Sun will disappear behind the Moon while sitting roughly 10° above the western horizon. It will be the first total solar eclipse visible from mainland Europe since August 11, 1999. Totality happens at sunset, during the Perseid meteor shower peak, under a new moon. For anyone in the path, the sequence is: watch the Sun vanish near the horizon, turn east, and count Perseids across a moonless sky all night. ...

On the evening of June 9, Venus and Jupiter close to within roughly 1.5° of each other, about three full-moon widths, low in the western twilight. Venus, near magnitude −4, is the brighter of the two. Jupiter sits at about magnitude −2, dimmer but impossible to miss. Both planets fit comfortably inside a standard binocular field of view, and you don’t need anything more than your eyes to enjoy the pairing. The show runs for the better part of a week on either side of the closest approach, so one cloudy night won’t ruin it. ...

On May 31 at 08:45 UTC, the Moon reaches full phase for the second time this month. That second-in-a-month qualifier makes it a Blue Moon by the modern calendar definition. It also happens to sit near apogee — 406,135 km from Earth — making it a Micromoon: roughly 5.5% smaller in angular diameter and about 10% dimmer than an average full moon. It’s the most distant full moon of 2026. And if you walk outside that night expecting something visibly unusual, you’ll be disappointed. ...

The Eta Aquariids peaked at 03:51 UTC on May 5, but this shower has a broad maximum — activity tonight and tomorrow morning (May 6–7) will be nearly as strong as peak night. The problem isn’t timing. It’s the moon: an 84%-illuminated waning gibbous will sit above the horizon during the entire pre-dawn window when the radiant is highest. That cuts your visible count roughly in half compared to a moonless year. ...

Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) passed perihelion on April 19, 2026 at 0.499 AU from the Sun, then made its closest pass of Earth on April 26 at 0.489 AU (about 73 million km). For a few days around peak it pulled to roughly magnitude +3 to +5, depending on whose visual estimate you trust on the COBS database. Bright enough to spot in dark-sky binoculars, faint enough that nobody from the Northern Mediterranean was going to call it a naked-eye showpiece. ...

The Lyrids peaked around 19:40 UT on April 22 — essentially yesterday evening for anyone in Europe. Conditions were as good as this shower gets: a new moon on April 17 meant only a thin crescent in the sky, and it set before 10 pm local, leaving the prime post-midnight hours properly dark. Under a clean dark site the International Meteor Organization expected 18–20 meteors per hour at the peak. From a light-polluted backyard, Space.com put realistic rates closer to 8–12/hour. ...