{ "circ": { "contactTimesLocal": { "timezone": "CEST (UTC+2), Spain peninsular", "C1": "19:33:28", "C2": "20:28:36", "max": "20:29:29", "C3": "20:30:22", "C4": "21:22:01 (after sunset)" }, "sunAtC2": { "altitudeDeg": 8.6, "azimuthDeg": 282.2 }, "sunAtMax": { "altitudeDeg": 8.5, "azimuthDeg": 282.3 }, "totalityDurationSec": 106, "umbraVelocityKmS": 2.675, "pathWidthKm": 297.1, "obscuration": "100.00%", "magnitude": "1.01621", "sourcesAgree": true, "notes": "PRIMARY SOURCE = Xavier Jubier\u0027s interactive map (xjubier.free.fr), driven at the exact coordinates 42.28800N, 4.14200W with its matched ground elevation 827 m and DeltaT=69.1s. This is the most precise per-point source and I trust it over the others because it uses the exact lat/long+elevation. Raw Jubier output (CEST +2): C1 19:33:27.6 (alt +18.7, az 273.2); C2 20:28:35.9 (alt +8.6, az 282.2); MAX 20:29:29.1 (alt +8.5, az 282.3); C3 20:30:22.0 (alt +8.3, az 282.5); Sunset 21:22 (alt -0.8, az 290.9); C4 21:22:01.0 (alt -0.9, az 291.0). Duration 1m46.0s; path width 297.1 km; umbral velocity 2.675 km/s; obscuration 100.00%; magnitude 1.01621; Moon/Sun ratio 1.03318; umbral depth 97.74%.\n\nALL PRIOR IN-CONVERSATION FIGURES CONFIRMED: C2 ~20:28:36 -\u003e Jubier 20:28:35.9 (exact); sun alt ~8.6 -\u003e 8.6; az ~282 -\u003e 282.2; totality ~106 s -\u003e 106.0 s; umbra velocity ~2.673 -\u003e 2.675 km/s (rounding); path width ~297 -\u003e 297.1 km. No corrections needed.\n\nCROSS-CHECKS: (1) tutiempo.net (en.tutiempo.net) Castrojeriz page agrees closely but runs a systematic ~6 s earlier on the total-phase contacts: C1 19:33:21, C2 20:28:30, max 20:29:23, C3 20:30:16; totality 1m46s (=106 s, matches); max alt 8 deg, az 282 deg (rounded, matches). The ~6 s offset is consistent with tutiempo using a different/near-zero site elevation vs Jubier\u0027s 827 m, which matters for a near-horizon sunset eclipse. (2) NASA/GSFC (Espenak) path table: nearest centerline point 18:28 UT (=20:28 CEST) at 42.9N 2.09W, sun alt 10 deg, centerline path width 304 km, centerline duration 1m49.3s -- consistent with the 297.1 km / 106 s off-centerline point value at Castrojeriz. (3) timeanddate.com country page is only regional (Castile-Leon: totality 20:27 CEST) and lists no city as far west as Castrojeriz, so it only coarsely corroborates.\n\nDISCREPANCIES / NOTES: (a) C4 (geometric end of partial) occurs at/just after sunset -- Jubier 21:22:01 with the sun already at -0.9 deg, i.e. below the horizon and NOT observable; tutiempo instead reports C4 as 21:18:00 at alt 0 deg (it effectively truncates at its computed sunset). The real takeaway is identical: the partial phase ends unobserved after the sun has set. (b) tutiempo shows \"Sun percentage covered 103.3%,\" which is inconsistent with the true obscuration of 100.00% (total) and does not equal the magnitude (1.0162 = 101.6%); I treat that tutiempo coverage figure as anomalous/mislabeled and rely on Jubier\u0027s obscuration 100.00% and magnitude 1.01621. Bottom line: sources agree on all material quantities; Jubier is the trusted authority for the exact-point values." }, "phenom": { "leadingEdge": "Because the Sun is only 8.6 deg up, the umbra knifes in at a very shallow, oblique angle, so the leading edge is NOT the crisp overhead line seen at high-sun eclipses. It reads instead as a soft, gradational gloom rising and steepening out of the WNW horizon (bearing ~282 deg, same side as the Sun). Over roughly the last 30-60 s the WNW quadrant deepens from steel-blue to indigo to charcoal, the boundary blurred over about 1-2 deg (penumbral gradient smeared by the low Sun and by long-path atmospheric scattering). Color runs cobalt/slate-blue at the top of the wall down to a compressed, glowing orange underline where still-sunlit air shows beneath the edge. From 3 km altitude you additionally see the edge as a curved band of shading racing across distant ridges, valley haze and any low cloud deck below you a few seconds before it engulfs your own position. It does not snap on; it floods in and darkens fastest toward the WNW.", "horizonGlow": "A continuous 360-deg band of sunset color rings the entire horizon at the base of the shadow dome - the signature feature. It is brightest and most saturated toward the WNW (toward the low Sun and the just-departed/arriving sunlight), a vivid salmon-to-tangerine flush (#E79A55 grading to a redder #D46A3E right at the skyline). It wraps around through the S, E and N as a softer, cooler peach-to-old-rose band, dimming and taking on a faint mauve/violet tint on the anti-solar ESE side where the shadow is deepest. Because the observer is at 3 km with a depressed (~1.8 deg) horizon, the ring is seen cleanly above distant terrain and appears as a luminous skirt beneath a dome of twilight - the classic look of standing inside the Moon\u0027s shadow with dusk in every direction at once. The band is only a few degrees tall, fading upward into blue-violet within ~10-15 deg of the horizon.", "skyGradient": "The sky is darkest overhead and brightens steadily downward to the horizon ring - the opposite of a normal daytime sky. At the zenith it is a deep, almost night-like violet-indigo (#14152E), the darkest patch skewed toward the WNW around the eclipsed Sun where the umbra is thickest (\u0027hole in the sky\u0027 effect). Moving down, it passes through a rich indigo-blue (#23264D) at ~45 deg, then a dusky steel-blue/slate around 20-25 deg, warming rapidly in the last ~10 deg into the salmon/orange horizon ring. The gradient is steepest and warmest in the WNW toward the low Sun. Contrast is high: bright horizon skirt, dark crown, giving a strong domed appearance. From altitude the zenith reads noticeably darker and more purely violet than it would at sea level because there is less airglow-scattering haze overhead.", "visiblePlanetsStars": [ { "name": "Venus", "directionDeg": 240, "note": "THE dominant object. Mag ~-4.0, alt ~29 deg in the SW - roughly 20 deg higher and ~42 deg left (south) of the low Sun. Near greatest eastern elongation (Aug 15, ~46 deg E of Sun), a brilliant white beacon that appears well before totality and blazes through it." }, { "name": "Regulus", "directionDeg": 273, "note": "Mag 1.4, alt ~14 deg. Sits only ~9-10 deg upper-left of the eclipsed Sun in Leo - close enough to appear right beside the corona/inner twilight. A lovely cinematic touch: a lone star hugging the black Sun." }, { "name": "Arcturus", "directionDeg": 224, "note": "Mag -0.05, alt ~62 deg, high in the SW. After Venus, the brightest star point and easily seen high overhead-ish." }, { "name": "Vega", "directionDeg": 79, "note": "Mag 0.0, alt ~56 deg, high in the E/ENE. Anchor of the overhead Summer Triangle, well placed on the anti-Sun side." }, { "name": "Deneb", "directionDeg": 58, "note": "Mag 1.25, alt ~37 deg, NE. Part of the Summer Triangle rising in the east." }, { "name": "Altair", "directionDeg": 101, "note": "Mag 0.8, alt ~26 deg, due E. Third corner of the Summer Triangle." }, { "name": "Spica", "directionDeg": 217, "note": "Mag 1.0, alt ~29 deg, SW, below-left of Venus. Fainter and lower in the brighter part of the twilight ring, a marginal catch." }, { "name": "Jupiter", "directionDeg": 70, "note": "NOT visible at this evening totality. It is a MORNING object (Jupiter-Mercury conjunction is Aug 15 before sunrise), below the ENE horizon - it belongs to that dawn six-planet lineup, not the eclipse sky." }, { "name": "Mercury", "directionDeg": 288, "note": "NOT visible. Only ~10 days past inferior conjunction (Aug 2), so it lies on the sunward/horizon side of the low Sun, effectively at or below the WNW horizon and drowned in the bright ring." }, { "name": "Mars", "directionDeg": 68, "note": "NOT visible. Solar conjunction was ~Feb 2026, so by August Mars is a faint pre-dawn morning object below the eastern horizon - part of the morning parade, absent from the evening totality." }, { "name": "Saturn", "directionDeg": 95, "note": "NOT visible. Rises later (opposition is Sept 2026); at totality it is still ~28 deg below the eastern horizon." } ], "coronaAtLowSun": "At only 8.6 deg altitude the light path through the atmosphere is ~5-7 airmasses, so the corona is heavily extinguished and strongly reddened. The delicate outer streamers that photograph so well at high sun are largely dimmed away; what shows is mainly the bright INNER corona and near-Sun streamers, glowing a warm pearly ivory shading to yellow-orange (#F4E3BE / #EAD3A0) rather than the usual electric silver-white. Differential atmospheric refraction near the horizon vertically compresses the black lunar disk into a slightly flattened oval and squashes the corona\u0027s vertical extent, so the corona looks wider than it is tall. Prominences and the chromosphere on the limb stand out easily as vivid pink-red flecks against the reddened background. Aug 2026 is on the declining side of solar max, so the underlying corona is still fairly rounded with streamers in several position angles, but extinction lets you see only the brightest of them. Net cinematic look: a warm, slightly oval, softly flared halo around an inky flattened disk, low over a burning horizon - not a crisp cold silver crown.", "shadowBands": "Faint, low-contrast ripples of light and shadow that may skate across pale ground (rock, snow, a white sheet, cloud tops) in the ~1-2 minutes bracketing second and fourth contact, when the Sun is a razor-thin slit. They are subtle - grey on grey, only a few percent contrast, bands of order a hand-span apart - and drift/shimmer like light on a swimming-pool floor. Orientation is roughly parallel to the thin crescent and their motion is set by high-altitude wind cells, not by the umbra\u0027s travel. With the Sun this low they are elongated and can be somewhat easier to notice against a bright low-lit surface, but they remain a delicate, near-monochrome effect - render as pale neutral-grey moving stripes at low opacity, not bold black bars.", "wallOfDarkness": "From 3 km looking WNW you watch a vast dusky blue-violet wall lean up out of the horizon and rush toward you, its base fringed with compressed orange. Below eye level the landscape - distant sierras, valley haze, any low cloud - goes slate-blue and then dark in a visible curved sweep that outruns sound, arriving from the WNW and tearing off to the ESE along the path (ground track bearing ~110-120 deg). Because the Sun is so low the shadow footprint on the ground is an enormously elongated ellipse and its edge is oblique and diffuse, so the experience is less a knife-edge passing overhead and more an explosive, directional deepening of twilight in the WNW that then wraps around you. The moment it envelops your peak, the crown of the sky drops to violet-indigo night, Venus and the bright stars snap out, and the full 360-deg sunset ring ignites at the base of the dome. Elevation makes the sweep more spectacular than at sea level: you see the darkness travel across terrain far below and the horizon ring is unobstructed all the way around.", "phasePalettes": [ { "phase": "deep-partial (pre-totality, low golden sun)", "skyTopHex": "#3E5F8A", "skyHorizonHex": "#EBCB8B", "landHex": "#B4A06E", "sunGlowHex": "#FFD27E" }, { "phase": "approach (shadow wall arriving)", "skyTopHex": "#1E2A4A", "skyHorizonHex": "#C96A3A", "landHex": "#454F63", "sunGlowHex": "#E8641F" }, { "phase": "totality (corona + 360-deg horizon ring)", "skyTopHex": "#14152E", "skyHorizonHex": "#E79A55", "landHex": "#22243F", "sunGlowHex": "#F4E3BE" }, { "phase": "egress (diamond ring / light returning)", "skyTopHex": "#2C3A63", "skyHorizonHex": "#F0B36A", "landHex": "#3A4258", "sunGlowHex": "#FFFDF4" } ], "approachDirectionNote": "The umbra approaches from the WNW - the same bearing as the low Sun, azimuth ~282 deg - and travels toward the ESE, with the shadow\u0027s ground track running roughly bearing 110-120 deg across northern/central Spain (NW-to-SE). Observer latitude that yields Sun alt 8.6 deg / az 282 deg is ~41.5 deg N (central-eastern Spain, near the end of the land path just before sunset ~20:30 local). Key geometric consequence: at 8.6 deg solar altitude the umbral shadow is projected onto the ground as a hugely elongated, blurred ellipse (major axis along the track, hundreds of km long), so the leading edge is soft and oblique rather than a sharp wall, and the shadow\u0027s ground speed is high. Face WNW (az 282) to watch the incoming edge; the darkest sky and warmest, brightest part of the horizon ring are both in that WNW direction, while the anti-solar ESE horizon glows a cooler, mauve-tinged orange. Totality here is short (~1.5-2 min) and the whole event plays out low over the horizon, so foreground terrain silhouettes strongly against the sunset ring. The ~1.8 deg horizon dip from 3 km altitude lets the shadow edge and the full ring be seen over distant ground." }, "framing": { "horizonDistanceKm": 195.5, "shadowFirstVisibleDistanceKm": 195.5, "shadowFirstVisibleLeadSec": 73.1, "apparentSpeedNote": "The umbra crosses the ground at a constant ~2.673 km/s, but the camera never sees constant motion — apparent angular speed scales as 1/(x^2 + H^2) with H=3 km, i.e. nearly inverse-square in ground distance x. Result: the wall CRAWLS on the far horizon, then RUSHES in the final seconds. Measured edge sweep-rate as seen from the drone: ~0.012 deg/s at the horizon (195 km), ~0.07 deg/s at 80 km, ~0.44 deg/s at 32 km, ~1.7 deg/s at 16 km, ~13.5 deg/s at 5 km, ~46 deg/s in the last kilometre — a \u003e1000x acceleration in perceived motion over the approach. For the first ~60 s of visibility the band barely seems to move; in the last ~6 s it rockets from a low horizon strip to sweeping vertically overhead. Two extra realism cues driven by the 8.6 deg sun: (1) the umbra footprint is stretched ~6.7x (1/sin 8.6 deg) along the shadow track, so the \u0027wall\u0027 is an enormously elongated, horizon-spanning band rather than a compact circle; (2) the low grazing sun and long atmospheric path make the leading edge SOFT and diffuse, a gradient curtain of steel-blue/violet rather than a razor line — enhancing the sense of a vast dimmer sweeping the meseta.", "recommendedFovDeg": 84, "timeline": [ { "tSec": -90, "event": "Deep partial phase; approaching umbra begins to stain the far horizon (edge still ~241 km out, beyond the 195 km ground horizon)", "visual": "Thin solar crescent low in the WNW; landscape washed in flat, metallic, colour-drained twilight; the WNW horizon sky darkens to steel-grey and violet as the umbra\u0027s upper-atmosphere shadow tints the sky ahead of its ground edge; light feels cold and wrong." }, { "tSec": -73, "event": "Leading shadow edge crosses the geometric horizon (~195 km)", "visual": "A distinct, soft-edged dark band materialises low on the WNW horizon — the first crisp sight of the wall. It appears almost perfectly stationary, a bruise-coloured strip beneath the pale sky." }, { "tSec": -60, "event": "Wall clearly defined on the horizon (~160 km)", "visual": "A broad, diffuse band of darkness spans the whole WNW horizon, elongated by the low sun; colour continues draining from the plateau; the wall still only crawls (~0.02 deg/s)." }, { "tSec": -45, "event": "Umbra advancing; 360-degree twilight glow forming (~120 km)", "visual": "The dark wall thickens and rises off the horizon; a band of orange-yellow false-sunset light wraps the entire horizon beneath the shadow; a temperature-drop chill sets in; the meseta turns grey-green." }, { "tSec": -30, "event": "Sky darkening; first planets and stars emerge (~80 km)", "visual": "Wall now visibly rising and advancing; the zenith deepens to dark blue; Venus and the brightest stars pop out; faint shadow bands may ripple across pale ground and the drone\u0027s field of view." }, { "tSec": -20, "event": "Perceptible acceleration begins (~53 km)", "visual": "The wall looms taller and its motion is now obviously quickening (~0.16 deg/s); deep twilight over the landscape; the sun is a dwindling sliver; anticipation builds." }, { "tSec": -12, "event": "Onrushing curtain (~32 km)", "visual": "Ambient light drops fast; the dark wall sweeps forward as a palpable curtain rolling across the plain (~0.45 deg/s); last thin crescent of sun burning in the WNW." }, { "tSec": -6, "event": "Apparent angular speed spikes (~16 km)", "visual": "The sweep-rate rockets past ~1.7 deg/s and keeps climbing; shadow bands flicker vividly across the ground; Baily\u0027s beads begin breaking up the crescent." }, { "tSec": -2, "event": "Umbra overruns the foreground (~5 km)", "visual": "The wall races over the near landscape at breathtaking apparent speed (~13 deg/s), tipping from a horizon strip toward overhead; brightness collapses; diamond ring imminent." }, { "tSec": 0, "event": "C2 — totality begins: diamond ring and corona", "visual": "A brilliant diamond ring flashes on the sun\u0027s eastern limb, then snaps out as the pearly corona blazes around the black lunar disk; the drone is fully engulfed; a 360-degree orange horizon glow rings the scene; the corona hangs low (only 8.6 deg up) over the WNW." }, { "tSec": 8, "event": "Chromosphere and prominences", "visual": "Pink chromosphere and flame-like prominences visible at the moon\u0027s limb; long coronal streamers reach out; the meseta lies in deep blue-grey darkness under an eerie stillness." }, { "tSec": 30, "event": "Deep totality", "visual": "Full corona structure resolved; stars and planets scattered across a dark sky; the sunset-coloured glow persists all around the horizon; ground illumination near its darkest." }, { "tSec": 53, "event": "Mid-totality / maximum darkness", "visual": "The steadiest, darkest moment; the umbra centre is overhead and already sweeping on toward the ESE; corona symmetric and calm; profound quiet over the plateau." }, { "tSec": 80, "event": "Late totality; brightening on the sun\u0027s western (WNW) limb", "visual": "The WNW side of the lunar limb begins to pale; corona still full but asymmetric now; a growing sense that light is about to return; horizon glow strengthens toward the WNW." }, { "tSec": 100, "event": "Baily\u0027s beads returning", "visual": "Bright beads of sunlight glint through lunar valleys on the western limb; the corona fades on that side; the landscape edges toward re-illumination." }, { "tSec": 106, "event": "C3 — totality ends: second diamond ring", "visual": "A dazzling diamond ring bursts on the sun\u0027s western (WNW) limb; the corona vanishes; the umbra\u0027s trailing edge sweeps away to the ESE (now behind the camera); a single instant of blinding flash." }, { "tSec": 112, "event": "Light floods back (trailing edge ~16 km, receding ESE)", "visual": "Daylight surges across the meseta from the WNW; colour and warmth return rapidly; a thin re-lit crescent hangs low in the WNW; the receding wall shrinks on the ESE horizon behind the drone." }, { "tSec": 120, "event": "Daylight returning; end of shot (trailing edge ~37 km, receding ESE)", "visual": "The plateau re-colours and brightens quickly; a widening crescent sun sits low in the WNW; planets fade from the paling sky; the departed umbra is now just a thin dark band low on the ESE horizon; shot ends." } ] } }