Warning: eclipse starts 19:12 tonight — never look without certified glasses
A partial solar eclipse crosses Germany this evening, and it is the deepest one visible here since August 1999. Depending on where you stand, the moon will cover between about 85 and 90 percent of the sun.
The eclipse arrives from the north-east. It reaches Greifswald at about 19:12 and Munich at about 19:23, and the maximum falls somewhere between 20:05 and 20:18. Coverage is deepest in the far south-west, up to around 90 percent along the line from Freiburg im Breisgau to Konstanz; Berlin and Hamburg see roughly 85 percent. Germany sits outside the band of total eclipse, which runs from northern Siberia past the Arctic over eastern Greenland and western Iceland into northern Spain and the Balearics. A bright sliver of sun therefore stays visible here the entire time.
That sliver is the danger. Hans Hoerauf, who directs the eye clinic at Göttingen university hospital, explains that the lens of the eye concentrates sunlight into focused heat on the retina, which can destroy the light-sensing cells within seconds and leave permanent scarring at the point of sharpest vision. The Federal Office for Radiation Protection stresses that heavy coverage and fading evening light are not protection. You need glasses certified to DIN EN ISO 12312-2:2015 with a CE mark, and you should check the filter for scratches, holes or tears before using it. Sunglasses, glacier goggles, strips of photographic film and glass blackened with candle soot are all dangerous, not alternatives. Binoculars, telescopes and cameras are worse again, because they concentrate the light further; they need proper solar filters fitted in front of the lens.
If you have no glasses, do not look at all. Punch a small hole in card and project the sun onto a sheet of paper, or stand with your back to the sun and let the light fall through a colander. The dappled light under a leafy tree does the same thing. ZDF is streaming the total eclipse from Mallorca from 20:00.
The sun will be low in the west, so you need a high spot with a clear view towards west or north-west. Stay out afterwards: the Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, with up to 100 an hour between 23:00 and 04:00.