Solar Eclipse 2027: The August 2 Totality and the Year's Other Eclipses

The total solar eclipse of August 2, 2027

A solar eclipse happens at a new moon that falls close to a lunar node, so that the Moon's disk crosses the Sun's. When the Moon is near enough to Earth to cover the Sun completely, the eclipse is total. When it is farther out and looks slightly too small, it leaves a ring of sunlight around its edge, and the eclipse is annular. 2027 has one of each: annular in February, total in August. The August 2 new moon falls in Leo, at 6:05 a.m. EDT.

By our calculation, greatest eclipse comes just after 10:06 UTC, at 25.5° north and 33.2° east, over southern Egypt near Luxor. There totality reaches its longest, about 6 minutes 27 seconds. The band of totality, the narrow strip where the Sun is fully hidden, is about 261 kilometers wide at that point, roughly 160 miles.

The path of totality

The Moon's shadow travels from west to east. It comes in from the Atlantic and reaches land at the Strait of Gibraltar, where it takes in the southern tip of Spain and northern Morocco. From there it crosses northern Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, then Egypt, passing over Luxor, before it crosses the Red Sea into Saudi Arabia and continues over Yemen and Somalia to the Indian Ocean.

Totality lasts several minutes at the best-placed cities on the path. By our calculation:

• Tangier, Morocco: about 4 minutes 54 seconds, with the peak at 9:47 a.m. local time.
• Luxor, Egypt: about 6 minutes 25 seconds, at 1:05 p.m. local time.
• Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: about 6 minutes 3 seconds, at 1:25 p.m. local time.

Spain sees only the northern edge of the path. Cádiz, with about 2 minutes 59 seconds of totality, and Málaga, with about 1 minute 58 seconds, are inside it by our calculation, but both sit right at that northern edge, where a few kilometers decide between totality and a thin crescent of Sun, so neither is a safe bet for totality. Seville and Madrid lie farther north, outside the path, and see a partial eclipse only.

Why totality lasts so long

You may see the August 2 eclipse described as the longest totality on land this century. We do not rank eclipses across a hundred years, so we leave that record claim to others and stick to what our calculation shows: about 6 minutes 27 seconds at the point of greatest eclipse, and about 6 minutes 25 seconds in Luxor.

Two things in our numbers account for that length. The first is the size of the Moon's disk: at greatest eclipse the magnitude is about 1.08, which means the Moon looks about 8% wider than the Sun and needs extra time to slide past it. The second is where it happens. In Luxor the Sun stands about 82 degrees high at the peak, nearly overhead, and with the Sun that high, Earth's rotation carries the ground along in the same direction as the shadow, which slows the shadow's sweep across any one spot.

What you can see from London and other cities

From the US there is nothing to see: by our calculation the eclipse is over before sunrise from Maine to Florida and Puerto Rico, and the West Coast is in the middle of the night. Eastern Canada is the exception: in St. John's, Newfoundland, a partial eclipse sits low on the horizon just after sunrise. From London the eclipse is partial, with about 42% of the Sun covered at 10:00 a.m. BST and the Sun about 40 degrees above the horizon. The table shows the peak in local time and how much of the Sun is covered in London and in other cities on or near the path.

City	Peak (local time)	Sun covered	Totality
New York	not visible	none	no
Los Angeles	not visible	none	no
London	10:00 a.m.	about 42%	no
Paris	11:01 a.m.	about 51%	no
Madrid	10:51 a.m.	about 86%	no
Seville	10:47 a.m.	about 98%	no
Cádiz	10:46 a.m.	100%	about 2 min 59 s, at the northern edge
Málaga	10:49 a.m.	100%	about 1 min 58 s, at the northern edge
Tangier	9:47 a.m.	100%	about 4 min 54 s
Tunis	10:10 a.m.	about 97%	no
Cairo	12:55 p.m.	about 95%	no
Luxor	1:05 p.m.	100%	about 6 min 25 s
Jeddah	1:25 p.m.	100%	about 6 min 3 s

The step from about 98% in Seville to 100% in Cádiz is larger than the numbers suggest. As long as a sliver of Sun remains, the sky stays bright and the eclipse stays partial; the darkness and the corona belong to totality alone. In London, with less than half the Sun covered, the daylight barely changes. Wherever you watch from, look at the Sun only through certified eclipse glasses and never directly, including during all of the partial phases.

The other four eclipses of 2027

Eclipses come in seasons, when a new or full moon falls near a lunar node. In 2027 a first pair arrives in February, and summer brings three close together around the August totality. By our calculation, the other four are:

• February 6: annular solar eclipse, at the new moon in Aquarius. Its ring of sunlight crosses Chile, Argentina and the South Atlantic to off West Africa, with about 7 minutes 46 seconds of annularity at greatest eclipse. It is not visible from New York or Los Angeles.
• February 20: penumbral lunar eclipse, at the full moon in Virgo. It is the deepest of the three lunar eclipses, and even so the Moon only dims a little. In New York the Moon rises while the eclipse is under way and is above the horizon at its peak that Saturday evening; in Los Angeles it stays below the horizon for all of it.
• July 18: penumbral lunar eclipse, at the full moon in Capricorn. It is so shallow it is practically invisible, and the Moon is below the horizon in New York and Los Angeles in any case.
• August 17: penumbral lunar eclipse, at the full moon in Aquarius. The Moon is above the horizon in both New York and Los Angeles for the whole eclipse, and in New York the full moon itself falls at 3:29 a.m. EDT. The shading is faint and easy to miss.

None of the three lunar eclipses is a blood moon. In a penumbral eclipse the Moon passes only through the pale outer part of Earth's shadow and never enters the dark core, so it does not turn red. A blood moon needs a total lunar eclipse, and 2027 has none.

What tradition reads into eclipses

Astrology reads eclipses as turning points. An eclipse is a new or full moon sitting close to a lunar node, one step up from an ordinary lunation. A solar eclipse is read as opening something and a lunar eclipse as bringing an ending or a realization into view. Eclipses come in pairs and seasons, and astrologers often follow one story across about eighteen months of them.

The August 2 eclipse falls in Leo, the sign of self-expression and the heart, and the tradition reads it as a fresh start in how you show yourself. For NovaOracles an eclipse is a mirror for reflection, a precisely timed alignment with no omen aimed at you. What a given eclipse stirs depends on the sign and house it falls in within your birth chart, far more than on the calendar date. Why eclipses matter explains why they arrive in pairs, and the moon and eclipses guide takes the subject phase by phase.

These five eclipses sit inside the year's wider rhythm of lunations. Full moon 2027 gives the complete calendar of twelve full moons and thirteen new moons with US Eastern times, and the lunar calendar computes every phase, eclipses included, for your location and any date you pick.