Warning: 88 percent eclipse at 20:11 tonight — protect your eyes
The deepest solar eclipse over the Netherlands since 1999 happens this evening, and the weather forecast is good. At its peak the moon will cover about 88 percent of the sun.
Times vary by a couple of minutes across the country. In Groningen the eclipse begins at 19:14 and peaks at 20:09 with 87 percent covered. In Den Helder it starts at 19:15 and peaks at 20:10 with 88 percent. Utrecht begins at 19:16 and peaks at 20:11 with 88.3 percent. Middelburg begins at 19:17 and peaks at 20:12 with 89.4 percent, the deepest in the country. Maastricht begins at 19:18 and peaks at 20:13. Everywhere the eclipse ends between about 21:01 and 21:05, minutes before the sun goes down.
Never look directly at the sun. Even with 88 percent covered, the visible sliver is bright enough to damage your retina, and the harm is chemical and thermal rather than painful — you may notice nothing at the time and find hours later that the damage is permanent. Proper eclipse glasses block more than 99.999 percent of sunlight and meet the ISO 12312-2 standard. A normal pair of sunglasses, a CD or an ordinary camera filter does not come close. Never point binoculars, a telescope or a telephoto lens at the sun without a dedicated solar filter fitted in front of the optics.
More than 110,000 pairs of eclipse glasses have been sold through the public observatories, and many places have run out. If you do not have any, use the pinhole method: make a hole about a millimetre wide in thin card, hold it around 60 centimetres from a sheet of white paper, and look at the projected image of the sun on the paper. Never look through the hole. The gaps in a leafy tree do the same thing, scattering small crescents of light across the ground.
The sun will be low — around 8 degrees above the horizon at maximum — so you need a clear view west and west-north-west. NOS is streaming it. Public observatories across the country are opening for the evening, and the Perseid meteor shower peaks the same night under a new moon.