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A small village in the province of Burgos will be one of the locations used for the global broadcast of the total solar eclipse on 12 August. NASA has selected Villalibado, a village brought back to life after decades of abandonment, to host one of its teams broadcasting the phenomenon live, which will be accessible worldwide through the US space agency’s digital platforms and San Francisco’s Exploratorium.
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The choice is down to several factors, among them its location within the path of totality, an unobstructed horizon and good communications infrastructure. The observation point will be set up next to the church of San Salvador, in the upper part of the village, where almost thirty NASA and Exploratorium scientists and technicians will prepare the international broadcast.
Joan Ansótegui, the businessman who bought Villalibado twenty years ago to turn it into a rural tourism complex, said in an interview with ‘Diario de Burgos’ (source in Spanish) that NASA had contacted him months earlier to rent the entire village, including the Romanesque church, for the eclipse. “I thought it was a scam,” he recalled of the phone call.
FILE – Corbel in the church of El Salvador in Villalibado.FILE – Corbel in the church of El Salvador in Villalibado.
He explained that the US agency had spent more than a year touring different points along the path of totality in Spain before opting for Villalibado. “They went without telling anyone and chose it after visiting many other places,” he said.
Ansótegui also pointed out that the technical demands of the team have been minimal. “They have only asked for a dedicated electricity and network supply, of course, but as we already have fibre-optic connections in the village there has been no problem,” he noted.
From abandoned village to global showcase
Villalibado lay uninhabited for almost three decades before work began to revive it as a rural tourism destination. Its last two residents left in 1998 and, years later, Ansótegui and his siblings spearheaded its restoration as a rural tourism complex.
FILE – Rural houses in Villalibado.FILE – Rural houses in Villalibado.
The eclipse will now turn this small village in Burgos into one of the places from which millions of people will follow one of the most eagerly awaited astronomical events of recent years.
The broadcast will be available on the website and YouTube channel of the Exploratorium (source in Spanish) and, according to this science museum in San Francisco, will also be distributed to other international media outlets.
The total solar eclipse on 12 Augustwill pass over Greenland, Iceland, the Atlantic Ocean and Spain, a small part of Portugal and northern Russia. Elsewhere in Europe and across large parts of the northern hemisphere it will be visible as a partial eclipse.
NASA will broadcast the phenomenon live from various points along the path of totality, featuring images of the eclipse, interviews with specialists and coverage of several scientific experiments scheduled for the day.
The live feed will begin at 10:30 (Pacific Time), 19:30 in mainland Spain, and in addition to the real-time coverage it will generate images and other material that will later be used for educational purposes.
