By Hazel Gandhi
A video of a solar eclipse from 2019 is being shared falsely claiming that it shows visuals captured during the recent eclipse seen in North America.
BOOM found that the claim is false and the video is from July 2019 and likely taken in South America.
The United States, Canada, and Mexico witnessed a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, a phenomenon where the moon obstructs the sun because of its close proximity to the Earth, resulting in short blackouts in the areas it affects.
A video claiming to show this recent solar eclipse is viral online with the claim that it was seen in Chile. A user on Threads shared the video with the caption, "A solar eclipse was captured on film in Chile."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The post is also circulating on Facebook with similar captions.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the viral video dates back to July 2019 and is likely shot in Chile; it is not related to the recent solar eclipse in North America.
We ran a reverse image search on Google and Yandex of some key frames from the viral video and found several social media posts from July and August 2019 carrying the same video. See here and here.
A total solar eclipse was seen on July 2, 2019 across the south pacific and South America, including parts of Argentina and Chile.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a search on Facebook for videos of the solar eclipse in Chile shared in 2019. We found that several users had shared posts of the eclipse on July 3, 2019, including ones that were an exact match to the viral video.
Click here for an archive.
The Facebook page of a non-profit based in Chile, called Marca Chile, had also shared the clip with the caption that translated to English as, "Do you want to relive the shocking solar eclipse? These are some of the images that left this event captured by our followers. Thank you for sending us your photos and spreading the beauty of Chile!"
This clip contained a compilation of videos from the eclipse in Chile, out of which the first video was an exact match to the viral one.
Click here for an archive.
BOOM could not independently verify the location of the video, however we were able to establish that it dates back to 2019 and not related to the recent solar eclipse.
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