France will witness its first solar eclipse in 27 years on Wednesday, August 12th - here's how to get the best view.
The eclipse will happen when the Moon passes between the sun and the Earth, blocking part of the Sun’s disk from view and casting its shadow on the ground.
Celestial happenstance has given our planet a satellite that is almost exactly the right distance and size from us to appear to be the same size as the star we orbit, which means that when the sun, moon and Earth are in the right alignment, the moon blocks out almost all of the sun.
We won’t quite get to see a total eclipse in France – totality will pass over the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, the Atlantic, northern Spain and north-eastern Portugal – but the event will still be very impressive, with many still able to see more than 90 percent of the sun blocked by the moon.
When and where
