Three solar eclipses are worth a trip in the next two years: the long total eclipse of August 2, 2027 across North Africa and Egypt, and two annular "ring of fire" eclipses, over South America and West Africa on February 6, 2027 and over the Amazon, Portugal and Spain on January 26, 2028. Pick one for the path map and the local times, the length of totality or annularity and how high the Sun will be in each place.
The longest totality of the century on land: up to 6 min 23 s near Luxor, across the Strait of Gibraltar, North Africa, Egypt and Arabia.
A "ring of fire" for up to 7 min 54 s: southern Chile and Argentina, Punta del Este, then Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Benin near sunset.
A "ring of fire" for up to 10 min 31 s: the Galápagos, Ecuador, Peru and the Amazon, then Madeira, the Algarve and southern Spain late in the afternoon.
At a total eclipse the Moon covers the whole Sun: for a few minutes the sky goes dark, the brightest stars and planets come out and the Sun's corona shows around the black Moon. At an annular eclipse the Moon is a little too far from Earth to cover it, so a bright ring of the Sun stays around it: the sky dims but doesn't go dark, and the ring is too bright to look at without a filter. Outside the path of either, the Moon takes only a bite out of the Sun (a partial eclipse).
From the guidance of NASA and the American Astronomical Society: NASA's eclipse safety page · The American Astronomical Society's list of safe viewers and filters.
Buy them well before you travel, and check that they're labelled ISO 12312-2 and come from a maker or seller on the American Astronomical Society's list above.
Search Amazon for ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses
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We compute every place ourselves from the positions of the Sun and Moon (the astronomy-engine library), for the place's own latitude, longitude and height, with NASA's Moon and Sun sizes and the Delta T (the difference between Earth's clock and atomic time) NASA used for each eclipse. To check the method we computed the points on NASA's published central lines:
| Eclipse | Delta T | Points checked | Largest difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total solar eclipse of August 2, 2027 | 71.7 s | 12 | 0.1 s |
| Annular solar eclipse of February 6, 2027 | 71.6 s | 14 | 0.3 s |
| Annular solar eclipse of January 26, 2028 | 71.9 s | 14 | 0.3 s |
Times are computed, not observed: check them before you travel. They come from our own calculation (astronomy-engine, the same Moon and Sun sizes and Delta T as NASA's predictions) and agree with NASA's published central-line durations to within a second, but they leave out the mountains and valleys on the Moon's edge (NASA: about 1 to 3 seconds of totality or annularity, and 1 to 3 km at the edges of the path), your exact spot in town and the weather.
Sources: eclipse times computed by FitzTopPicks with astronomy-engine (MIT License) and checked against NASA's path tables (Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC, eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov, eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov, eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov). Places and time zones: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Map outlines: Natural Earth (public domain). Airports: OurAirports (public domain).