The total solar eclipse of 12 August 2026 will be the longest of the century, with a duration of 4 hours and 24 minutes from first contact to last, and totality lasting up to 2 minutes along a narrow corridor. The path of the Moon’s central shadow will cross eastern Greenland, the west coast of Iceland, northern Spain, and the far north of Siberia, ending as an eclipsed sunset over the Mediterranean. Viewed from Buenos Aires or São Paulo, the event will be invisible: all of South America lies outside the visibility zone.

Before that spectacle, the July full moon—known in North American traditions as the Buck Moon, for the season when deer antlers regrow—reaches its exact phase at 14:37 UTC on 29 July. The lunar disk will appear 98% illuminated the following night, its amber hue exaggerated by atmospheric filtering near the horizon. This near-full brightness will create challenging conditions for the Delta Aquariids meteor shower, which peaks on the night of 30–31 July.

The American Meteor Society reports that the shower typically produces up to 25 meteors per hour under dark skies, but this year the Moon’s glare will wash out all but the brightest streaks. Observers in the southern United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean are better positioned than those in northern latitudes; the radiant, in the constellation Aquarius, climbs highest after midnight. NASA recommends allowing 30 minutes for eyes to adjust to darkness and looking halfway between the horizon and the zenith.

For the eclipse, NASA will deploy WB-57 high-altitude research aircraft flying above 15,000 metres to capture visible and infrared images of the solar corona and to measure sudden ionospheric disturbances as the Moon blocks solar radiation. Instruments from multiple universities will track how the abrupt loss of sunlight affects radio communications and satellite navigation signals, feeding into space-weather models that protect orbital and terrestrial infrastructure. The next total solar eclipse of comparable length will not occur until 23 August 2044.