On 12 August 2026, parts of Europe experienced a total solar eclipse. But hours before the Moon’s shadow swept over Earth, the satellite pair making up ESA’s Proba-3 mission created an eclipse artificially – for the 65th time – without the Moon’s help.
The Sun’s inner corona appears greenish in this image taken in the morning of 12 August 2026 by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3. This image shows the corona how observers on the ground would see it just hours later through a green filter.
An eclipse with no Moon necessary? 60 000 km above Earth, the two spacecraft align in perfect formation 150 metres apart. The Occulter spacecraft acts as an artificial Moon and eclipses the Sun for the Coronagraph spacecraft, which then has an uninterrupted view of the Sun’s corona for hours at a time.
But on 12 August, the Moon didn’t want to be left out – shortly after this image was taken, our closest celestial neighbour crossed Proba-3’s field of view, creating a double eclipse.
About two weeks ago, Proba-3 was observing the Sun from the other side. Because it takes the Sun two weeks to rotate halfway around its axis, the mission’s coronagraphy image served as a rather accurate prediction of what the views would be like on 12 August, both for the mission itself and for observers on the ground.
Millions of people, as well as many space missions, captured the natural 2026 solar eclipse: here’s our selection.
[Image description: a square image with the Sun in the centre taken during an artificial solar eclipse. Against a black background, the Sun’s bright body is covered by a black disc, and light green hair-like tendrils extend from the black disc in all directions. Bright green light peeks from behind the black disc’s edge, slowly fading towards the outer edges of the image. On the left side of the black circle’s edge, the green light is brighter and appears almost white.]