Eclipse 2026 

I remember the 1999 eclipse – those were different times. Information was scarce (for a kid, at least) and equipment was hard to come by. I still tried though – equipped with my father’s Praktica camera, a 200mm lens and a DIY mylar filter, but I managed to miss the totality by a couple of kilometers.

This year was the first time since 1999 that it happened in the continental Europe again.

But, aptly for the current times, it also felt like an instant meal, with last minute orders of glasses and filters, last minute location scouting, and a resigned sense of “if we miss it, we miss it” that only comes with age.

We went to Valencia (easy to travel and the family likes it), but it was close to the edge of the totality band and only got 1 minute of totality. What’s more, the sun was quite low in the sky, about 4.5°, so it would not be visible in most of the city. The official recommended location was at the Malvarrosa beach.

Shademap showed poor conditions

We had no desire to attend such organized mass events (about 10k people expected at Malvarrosa), so we found a location north, in Alboraya.

Turns out we also had some luck with the clouds and caught the thing.

The pics are mediocre, because of a youtube comment that said: there will be thousands of professional photos, so you should just watch… it’ll be over in a minute.

Still, I had to. And I’m glad I did, because that’s the only way I can still actually believe that I was there and that this is what I saw 🙂

A photoshop collage of the phases