What you'll see in A Coruña
Artist's impression. The Sun's height above the rooftops is its real altitude from A Coruña; the skyline itself is generic.
A Coruña, on Spain's northwest Atlantic coast, gets 1 minute 17 seconds of totality, one of the longer windows on the mainland.
Because totality is brief, the "diamond ring" effects bookending it will be especially striking. Pick a viewpoint with a clear view to the west-northwest, away from buildings and hills.
⚠ Eye safety
Use ISO 12312-2 certified eclipse glasses for the entire partial phase. The ONLY exception is 20:27:40, 20:28:57 CEST, when the Sun is fully covered from A Coruña.
The same night in A Coruña: six planets, then the Perseids
The eclipse IS this month's new Moon: it falls at 19:37 CEST on the 12th, a couple of hours before the Sun sets eclipsed over Spain. So the night that follows has no Moon in it at all, which is the best luck a Perseid night can have, and by dawn six planets are strung across the sky.
Six planets before dawn, 06:51 local on 13 August
Positions from A Coruña, 06:51 local, about 45 minutes before sunrise, late enough for the low pair to clear the horizon and early enough for the sky to still be dark. Venus is not among them: it is an evening object this month and sits far below the horizon at dawn.
- Jupiter, 2° up in the ENE, magnitude -1.8binoculars
- Mercury, 5° up in the ENE, magnitude -1.1naked eye
- Mars, 34° up in the E, magnitude 1.3naked eye
- Saturn, 49° up in the SSW, magnitude 0.4naked eye
- Uranus, 52° up in the ESE, magnitude 5.7binoculars
- Neptune, 43° up in the SSW, magnitude 7.8telescope
Perseids, under no Moon at all
The Perseids peak in the small hours of 13 August, and the radiant is highest just before dawn: 66° up from A Coruña at around 06:20 local. With the Moon 0% lit, the only thing left dimming them is the light where you stand.
Under A Coruña's own sky (18.7 magnitudes per square arcsecond, Bortle 8) expect very roughly 7 an hour at that moment, against about 38 from a genuinely dark site an hour's drive away. That gap IS the light pollution.
For scale, both sampled from the same atlas: central Paris and Madrid sit in its brightest zone, Bortle 9, where the naked eye reaches magnitude 3.5 and the Milky Way is simply absent. The Cévennes reserve and the Pic du Midi in France come out Bortle 2, magnitude 6.6, five of the six planets naked-eye and roughly ten times the Perseid count. An hour of driving out of a large city typically buys two or three Bortle classes.
Planet and radiant positions computed with astronomy-engine for these coordinates. Perseid maximum at solar longitude 140°, the IMO's definition; the rate of 100 an hour at the zenith is theirs too. Sky brightness sampled from the light pollution atlas (VIIRS, 2025), about 1.6 km per pixel, it knows your district, not your street.
FAQ
Is A Coruña in the path of totality?
Yes, A Coruña is inside the path, with 1m 17s of totality starting at 20:27:40 CEST.
Do I need eclipse glasses in A Coruña?
Yes, for the entire partial phase (19:31, 20:27:40 and 20:28:57, 21:22 CEST). You may remove them only between 20:27:40 and 20:28:57, while the Sun is fully covered.
Sources: NASA eclipse predictions, timeanddate.com local circumstances, and the local-circumstances table on the Wikipedia article for this eclipse, for A Coruña, Spain (Aug 12, 2026). See the hub page for every city and the path map.