In the shadow of the moon

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue75 1–31 August 2026

I suspect everyone who has seen a total solar eclipse remembers exactly where they were. Until recently, for me it was Vienna in August 1999, with Eiffel 65’s Blue (Da Ba Dee) blasting over the Danube.

This August a few other RSAA members and I had the enormous pleasure of seeing another total solar eclipse, this time over Spain.

For a few extraordinary moments, the Moon completely blocks the bright surface of the Sun and reveals its faint outer atmosphere: the corona, heated to more than a million degrees and seen as the glowing halo surrounding the Sun. We could even see the beautiful pink prominences around the edge of the Sun with our own eyes during totality.

There is a fitting connection to home: Mount Stromlo was founded in 1924 as the Commonwealth Solar Observatory, with solar and atmospheric physics at the heart of its original mission. Studying the Sun is quite literally where our observatory started.

The photo shown here was taken by Matthias Steinmetz, using a considerably more professional setup than mine (although I am very happy to show anyone my lower-budget phone version!).

If you have never experienced totality yourself, put 22 July 2028 in your calendar. A total solar eclipse will cross Australia, with Sydney getting almost four minutes of totality. Canberra will narrowly miss the path, so this one will be worth a road trip.

Sven Buder

Image credit: Matthias Steinmetz