What you'll see in Vestmannaeyjar
Artist's impression. The size of the bite is the 99.6% published for Vestmannaeyjar, the side the Moon crosses from is its real position angle at maximum, and the Sun's height above the rooftops is its real altitude. The skyline itself is generic.
Keep eclipse glasses on for the whole event, the Moon never fully covers the Sun here, so it is never safe to look without them, even at maximum.
⚠ Eye safety
Use ISO 12312-2 certified eclipse glasses for the entire partial phase. There is no safe moment to remove them in this city, the Sun is never fully covered.
The same night in Vestmannaeyjar: 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, 04:25 local on 13 August
Positions from Vestmannaeyjar, 04:25 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, 3° up in the NE, magnitude -1.8naked eye
- Mercury, 5° up in the NE, magnitude -1.1naked eye
- Mars, 24° up in the E, magnitude 1.3naked eye
- Saturn, 30° up in the S, magnitude 0.4naked eye
- Uranus, 34° up in the ESE, magnitude 5.7binoculars
- Neptune, 27° up in the S, magnitude 7.8binoculars
Perseids, under no Moon at all
The Perseids peak in the small hours of 13 August, and the radiant is highest just before dawn: 36° up from Vestmannaeyjar at around 22:00 local. With the Moon 0% lit, the only thing left dimming them is the light where you stand.
Under Vestmannaeyjar's own sky (20.3 magnitudes per square arcsecond, Bortle 6) expect very roughly 12 an hour at that moment, against about 25 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.
One catch at this latitude: the sky never gets properly dark on this date. The Sun only reaches 11° below the horizon, so faint meteors and the two low planets are washed out all night.
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 Vestmannaeyjar in the path of totality?
No, Vestmannaeyjar sees a deep partial eclipse, 99.6% of the Sun covered at maximum (17:50 GMT). The Moon never fully covers the Sun here.
Do I need eclipse glasses in Vestmannaeyjar?
Yes, for the entire event (16:49, 18:49 GMT). The Sun is never fully covered in Vestmannaeyjar, so eclipse glasses stay on throughout.
Sources: NASA eclipse predictions, timeanddate.com local circumstances, and the local-circumstances table on the Wikipedia article for this eclipse, for Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland (Aug 12, 2026). See the hub page for every city and the path map.