12 August 2026
2026
Spain
A rare European totality. Instruments will be stationed along the Spanish path to map the corona at solar maximum.
On 12 August 2026, the Moon’s shadow will cross the Iberian Peninsula in one of the most accessible totalities of the decade. The Solar Wind Sherpas will occupy multiple sites along the Spanish path, carrying white-light imagers and narrow-band spectrographs tuned to forbidden coronal emission lines.
Solar maximum favours a complex, structured corona: streamers, prominences, and possible coronal mass ejections within the few minutes of darkness. The team’s aim is to capture temperature and magnetic topology across a range of heights that space-borne coronagraphs cannot reach.
Field sites are chosen for duration of totality, weather statistics, and the logistics of moving several tonnes of optics into position — the work that gave the Sherpas their name.