Total Solar Eclipse

The Exploratorium, a hands-on museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco, California, brings you live images of the sun during total solar eclipses.

Update for 2020:

To keep our staff, our colleagues, and our communities safe, the Exploratorium won’t be sending a team to Chile to cover the December 14, 2020 total solar eclipse as planned.

We hope to see you again for the annular solar eclipse in 2023—and in the meantime, you can check out our eclipse science video collection and replays of coverage of past eclipses.

This free app allows you to view livestream video coverage and telescopic images during Exploratorium eclipse expeditions.

• Explore the path of totality of past and upcoming eclipses with interactive maps and see the level of total eclipse you can observe from your location.

• Share livestream and past expedition videos.

• Follow the conversation on Twitter using #eclipse2023, #eclipse2024, #solareclipse, and #totalsolareclipse in the app's Twitter View and share your tweets about the eclipse.

• Watch and share videos that explain what an eclipse is and how to view an eclipse safely.

• Receive notifications about the eclipse livestreams

When to Watch

The app displays viewing times for each available live stream adjusted to your device’s time zone. Live stream start times in PDT / EDT / UTC are:

Video Data Usage

We strongly recommend enabling WiFi on your device when viewing videos. Streaming videos can consume a large amount of data transfer, so please keep that in mind to avoid data overage charges from your mobile carrier. Under Mobile Network Data Usage on the Settings screen, choose “Play video only when connected to WiFi” to allow video play while on WiFi only.

Permissions

This app requires the following permissions:

Internet Access to access all app content

WiFi Network to determine if you're connected to a WiFi network

Location to map your location on the eclipse path

Notification to send you updates about eclipse livestream viewing

Calendar to add an event to your calendar about eclipse livestreams

The eclipse livestream and app is made possible through a generous grant from NASA. This material is based upon work supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNX16AB96A issued through the Science Education Mission Directorate. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.