Total solar eclipse of August 2, 2027: times for your city

On Monday, August 2, 2027, the Moon passes squarely in front of the Sun and its shadow crosses the Strait of Gibraltar, North Africa, Egypt and Arabia. Inside that band, the path of totality, the sky darkens to deep twilight for several minutes, the Sun's corona appears and the brightest planets come out. Outside it, the Sun turns into a crescent but never goes dark.

What sets this eclipse apart is the length of totality. By our calculation it reaches 6 minutes 22 seconds at the point of greatest eclipse in southern Egypt and 6 minutes 20 seconds in Luxor. The North American eclipse of April 8, 2024 managed 4 minutes 28 seconds at its longest. Two things stretch this one out: the Moon looks almost 8% wider than the Sun, and near Luxor the Sun stands about 82 degrees high, so Earth's rotation carries the ground along with the shadow and slows its sweep over any one spot.

It is also easy to reach. The path touches southern Spain and Gibraltar, crosses northern Morocco near Tangier, and runs along the Nile valley past Luxor, all places with airports and hotels. Much of Europe, Turkey and the Middle East sees a deep partial eclipse the same morning or midday.

The Moon's shadow touches land around the Strait of Gibraltar at about 10:45 a.m. Spanish time (8:45 UTC). It takes in the southern tip of Spain, Gibraltar, Ceuta and northern Morocco, then crosses northern Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, reaches Egypt, crosses the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia near Jeddah and Mecca, and leaves land over Yemen and northern Somalia. At greatest eclipse the band is about 258 kilometers wide.

The edges matter. Cádiz and Málaga lie inside the northern edge by our calculation, with about 2 minutes 53 seconds and 1 minute 49 seconds of totality, while Seville, Tunis, Cairo and Aswan sit just outside and see 94 to almost 100% of the Sun covered, which is still a partial eclipse. Near an edge a few kilometers decide, so if the calculator flags your place as close to the edge, move toward the center line.

Never look straight at the Sun, even when most of it is covered, without a proper solar filter. The American Astronomical Society and NASA give the same advice: use eclipse glasses or a handheld solar viewer that meets the international standard ISO 12312-2. Ordinary sunglasses, even very dark ones, are not safe. Check your filter before use and throw it away if it is scratched, punctured or torn. Keep an eye on children.

Do not look through a camera, binoculars or a telescope while wearing eclipse glasses. The concentrated sunlight burns through the small filter and into your eye. Optical equipment needs its own certified solar filter fitted over the front of the lens.

Only inside the path of totality, and only while the Sun is completely covered, may you take the glasses off and look at the corona with the naked eye. Put them back on as soon as the first bead of sunlight reappears; the calculator gives the exact second for your place. Anywhere outside the path, including Madrid, Paris, London, Berlin, Istanbul and Sofia, keep the filter on for the whole eclipse. A pinhole projector, a small hole in a card that throws an image of the Sun onto paper, lets you watch without looking at the Sun at all. Eye damage from the Sun is painless, so you will not feel it happening.

The calculator uses the classical Besselian-element method: from our own positions of the Sun and Moon it builds the Moon's shadow cone, then finds the four contacts and the moment of maximum for your exact latitude, longitude and height. The same code produces every row of the table and the downloadable file. The Sun's altitude is geometric, without atmospheric refraction.

We check the engine automatically against two published sources. Against NASA's Besselian elements for this eclipse (Fred Espenak's Five Millennium Canon), our contact times run about 4 to 5 seconds early and the length of totality agrees to within about 2 seconds. Against the local times published by timeanddate.com our times run 7 to 14 seconds early. NASA's own elements differ from timeanddate by several seconds as well, because the sources assume slightly different values for Earth's rotation (Delta T) and use different lunar theories. Treat each time as good to about 15 seconds, and allow a few more at the very edge of the path, where the valleys on the Moon's limb shorten or lengthen totality slightly.