// SPACE.COM — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
I sailed to Greenland for a total solar eclipse — what I saw left me speechless
I understood the science and had seen thousands of eclipse photographs, but nothing prepared me for the emotion of watching totality unfold above the icebergs and fjords of East Greenland.
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I woke up on the morning of Aug. 12 and looked out of the window to something I hadn't dared hope for: blue sky.
After days of scrutinizing weather models that seemed determined to test the nerves of everyone aboard the HX Expeditions ship MS Spitsbergen, somehow, against the odds, the clouds had cleared. Even then, I didn't trust it (especially after my 2024 eclipse experience). We had traveled thousands of miles, crossed the Greenland Sea and ventured deep into Scoresby Sund to put ourselves in the path of the moon's shadow. Now there was nothing to do but wait — and hope the sky stayed clear.
The wind howled across the deck, but nobody seemed to mind. If anything, it was helping us, keeping the clouds at bay. The atmosphere aboard felt like Christmas Eve with a ship full of overexcited children. Some guests had chased eclipses across the world; for others, this would be their first. Either way, Aug. 12 was the date we'd been waiting years for.
But by the time we reached Scoresby Sund, something had shifted.
I had traveled all this way to look up. Instead, I found myself looking around. I'd come here for 2 minutes and 14 seconds of darkness. Instead, Greenland had spent the previous days relentlessly demanding my full attention.
This trip was made possible by travel and accommodation provided by HX Expeditions.
After a couple of days at sea during the crossing from Svalbard to East Greenland, our first sight of land appeared almost like a mirage on the horizon. Soon, icebergs were drifting past the ship and the scale of the landscape became increasingly difficult to comprehend. We could sail for hours through Northeast Greenland National Park without seeing a single sign of human civilization beyond our own ship. At times, moving through those immense geological landscapes felt less like traveling across Earth and more like exploring some distant, icy-covered moon.
Yet, the more otherworldly Greenland appeared, the more it made me appreciate our own planet.