🔭 Astronomical Events August 24 – 30, 2026
Written by Mia Astrology ✨🌌
Apparently August 2026 has decided that behaving normally is beneath it.
We have barely recovered from the August 12 total solar eclipse, the Perseids have only just finished throwing meteors across the sky, and now, sixteen days after the Moon passed directly in front of the Sun, the celestial geometry flips around and Earth steps between the Sun and Moon instead.
The result arrives during the early hours of Friday, August 28: a deep partial lunar eclipse.
And when I say deep, I do not mean the sort of lunar eclipse where you stare at the Moon for twenty minutes wondering whether one corner looks slightly greyer than usual and eventually convince yourself that it does because you have already made coffee and stayed awake for this.
At maximum eclipse, approximately 96.2% of the Moon’s visible area will be inside Earth’s dark umbral shadow.
That is agonisingly close to total.
The Moon will look as though someone has taken an enormous dark bite out of it, with almost the entire lunar disc swallowed by Earth’s shadow while a thin portion remains illuminated by direct sunlight. Parts of the eclipsed Moon may also take on copper, rust or reddish tones because sunlight filtering through Earth’s atmosphere can still reach the shadowed lunar surface.
And yes, those of us in Iceland get to see this one too.
I genuinely feel as though Iceland won some sort of astronomical lottery this August, because after standing inside the path of the total solar eclipse on August 12, we get another eclipse just sixteen days later, and although this one requires a painfully early alarm clock rather than eclipse glasses, Reykjavík gets an excellent view of the partial lunar eclipse before the Moon sinks toward the southwestern horizon.
The eclipse is also beautifully placed for much of North America, including the United States and Canada, while large parts of Europe and Africa see at least some portion of it.
Australia, unfortunately, sits on the wrong side of Earth for this particular performance.
And the best part?
Unlike a solar eclipse, you do not need special glasses.
