Solar Eclipse, Aurora & Christmas Moon – Aktuálně.cz

Meteor showers without moonlight

We can also look forward to major meteor showers in 2026. In January, the Quadrantids, one of the most active swarms of the year, will start with a meteor spectacle. Raise your eyes to the sky especially around January 4th, sixty to eighty meteors should fall in an hour.

In April we will see the Lyrids, the maximum of which falls on April 22. Although they do not have a very high activity – usually only around eighteen meteors per hour, they represent an interesting phenomenon that is visible all over the sky.

Night clouds, leprechauns and the much-anticipated eclipse

The beginning of summer promises one of the most amazing atmospheric phenomena. High above the horizon, the night’s luminous clouds will shine, the soft silvery ripples should be best seen shortly after sunset.

In the summer, according to Petr Horálek from the Institute of Physics in Opava, you can also go hunting for so-called red sprites – short electrical discharges shooting upwards above massive storm clouds. But it will require a good amount of patience, the whole phenomenon lasts only a fraction of a second.

The most anticipated event of the next year falls on the early evening of August 12 – the solar eclipse. For Central Europe, it will be one of the strongest solar phenomena of this century. Here we can look forward to an exceptionally deep partial eclipse, the largest since the great European eclipse of 1999. The sun will be covered by up to 90 percent, just a few tens of minutes before its sunset.

The sky thus darkens to a strange twilight hue. If you would like to see a total eclipse, you have to go, for example, to the northwest of Spain, where the so-called belt of totality will pass. After 27 long years, it will be the first observable total eclipse from Europe.

Just 16 days later, on August 26, our companion will plunge into the Earth’s shadow. We are thus expecting a very significant partial eclipse of the Moon, which will be only seven percent short of totality. We will be able to observe the beginning at daybreak, it will occur at 4:33 in the morning, and the phenomenon will end at 6:17. The moon will be low over the horizon during the apparition.

Aurora Borealis and the Big Christmas Moon

The sun will be past the peak of its eleven-year cycle, so the likelihood of auroras remains elevated for the next twelve months. The breathtaking colorful spectacle can thus reach our low latitudes again, look out for it especially in spring and autumn.