I was on a flight from Helsinki to London when the 2026 solar eclipse occurred this week.

With uncharacteristic forethought I’d ordered, taken delivery of – and brought with me – eclipse glasses and a little accompanying cardboard filter for my phone camera.

I’d also researched (and paid a small fee for) a seat on the right side of the aircraft based on its flightpath back to London Heathrow.

I was not disappointed.

For about an hour of the flight I got a truly amazing view.

I was also able to pass the glasses around the cabin a bit so other folks could take a look safely.

I mean, it was a partial eclipse from my point of view – but still – the whole thing was the dictionary definition of awesome for me. I was getting my RDA of the awes, for sure. A fascinating thing perhaps unique to the situation was seeing the moon swing around over the disc of the sun as we travelled from east to west.

Here’s a little visualisation built with Claude Code of the flight, the path of the eclipse in relation to it, and my photos.