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Annular solar eclipse captured on Feb. 17, 2026 by ESA’s Proba-2 satellite. (Image credit: ESA\/Royal Observatory of Belgium)<\/p>\n
On Feb. 17, 2026, the moon slipped directly between Earth and the sun, creating a spectacular ‘ring of fire’ visible to very few people on Earth, but ESA’s Proba-2 had had the best seat in the house.<\/p>\n
From its vantage point in orbit, the satellite was able to witness the annular solar eclipse<\/a> in striking detail \u200a\u2014\u200a \u200anot once, but four times during its orbit, including a perfect ‘ring of fire’ at 6:31 a.m. EST (1131 GMT) when the moon occulted just over 93%<\/a> of the sun’s disk.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The stunning image was captured with Proba-2’s SWAP instrument, which views the sun in extreme ultraviolet light, revealing details of the sun’s corona \u2014 the outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n What is it?<\/p>\n An annular solar eclipse<\/a> occurs when the moon passes in front of the sun while positioned farther from Earth during its slightly elliptical orbit. Because the moon appears a bit smaller in the sky at that distance, it doesn’t completely cover the sun’s disk (like we see during a total solar eclipse). Instead, a bright ring of sunlight encircles the moon’s silhouette, often called a ‘ring of fire’.<\/p>\n While Proba-2 had an unobstructed view from space<\/a>, on Earth the full annular phase was only visible from remote locations<\/a> in Antarctica, limiting the spectacle to just a small number of researchers stationed at remote scientific outposts \u2026 and a lot of penguins. Observers in the southern tip of Chile and Argentina, along with parts of southern Africa, witnessed a partial solar eclipse instead.<\/p>\n