Awe-Inspiring Images from This Year’s Solar Eclipse

In ancient times, a solar eclipse may have been seen as a message from the gods or a sign of the end of the world, but in the modern era, we know exactly when these celestial phenomena are going to occur—and can be primed with our phones and cameras in hand.

Yesterday’s solar eclipse could be seen in its totality across regions of Greenland, Iceland, Spain, and Portugal, while many other parts of the world got a partial eclipse instead.

Professional astronomers and casual observers alike captured a vast number of images and videos of the event—with the appropriate eye protection in place, of course. Here are some of the best.

Andrew McCarthy was one of the photographers capturing shots of the eclipse, in this case from a ship in the middle of the Mediterranean:

A perfectly timed shot, with the sun’s corona and a rising solar prominence (the red jet at the top) visible around the moon’s silhouette:

Look closely at the photo on the top left, and you can see the International Space Station passing in front of the sun during this partial eclipse. On the bottom right, a time-lapse image shows the stages of a total eclipse above a field of sunflowers in San Millán de los Caballeros, Spain:

Another time-lapse photo from Spain, this time from just outside the town of Duraton, taken by official Cape Canaveral photographer Ben Cooper:

Here the sun and moon seem like they’re perched atop a lighthouse, as taken from a boat on the water by Dutch photographer Albert Dros off the coast of Menorca:

Special equipment isn’t necessarily required to grab dramatic images of the eclipse. This shot from Galicia in Spain was taken on a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra:

Eclipse-watchers on Glastonbury Tor in the United Kingdom looking at the sun partially obscured by the moon, taken by photographer Michelle Cowbourne:

Sometimes an alternative view of the eclipse can be very compelling, as with this image captured by author Emma Mitchell during a partial eclipse in the U.K:

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Lead image: 2026 Total Solar Eclipse (NHQ202608120205) by NASA HQ PHOTO, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0