The Astrophysics Institute of the Canaries (IAC) has participated in a number of outreach activities related to today’s solar eclipse (Friday 20 March 2015).

Astrophysicists from the IAC with the astrophotographer Daniel López went off to hunt the eclipse, looking for a clear sky. They found it in the municipality of Granadilla, in the south of the island of Tenerife, from where they took pictures of the eclipsed sun at different phases.

Another group of astrophysicists and solar physicists from the IAC collaborated with the Museum of Science and the Cosmos (MCC) of the Museums of Tenerife, in public activities related to observations of the eclipse, which they had planned to carry out from the roof terrace of the museum between 07.45 a.m. and 09. 38 a.m. local time, the times when the partial eclipse began and ended when viewed from the Canaries. Although clouds ruled out observing the eclipse for all but a few seconds, more than 400 visitors, among them school students and the general public who had gone to the museum, could attend a lecture-workshop (with two sessions, one at 09.15 and the other at 10.00) given by MCC staff, in which they explained how eclipses are produced, and made direct connection with the web platforms which were transmitting the total eclipse from the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, and from the Svalbard Islands (in the frozen Arctic ocean).

The expedition of the GLORIA project, in the Faroe Islands, also had partly cloudy skies at the moment of totality, but they were able to catch images between the clouds of this exceptional moment.

In addition some educational centres in the Canaries were able to appreciate the eclipse thanks to the 3,000 pairs of special spectacles which the IAC lent out for the occasion.

Related note for the press: Total solar eclipse: 20th March. GLORIA will broadcast images in real time from the Faroe Islands