Total solar eclipse — 2 August 2027
The Moon’s shadow crosses southern Spain, North Africa and Egypt. At Luxor totality lasts 6 minutes 22 seconds — the longest visible from land until 2114.
Oppositions and elongations are only useful if you know what to do with them. One honest guide per planet — what you really see, at what magnification, and when it is worth bothering.
Spain, North Africa & Egypt
Visible: Morocco, southern Spain (Tarifa, Gibraltar, Cádiz, Málaga), Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia.
Up to 6m22s at Luxor, ~4m39s at Tarifa. The longest totality visible from land until 2114.
Full guide →Chile, Argentina & the South Atlantic
Visible: South America, western and southern Africa, Antarctica. Annular path across Chile, Argentina and the Atlantic.
A “ring of fire” — the Moon is too far away to cover the Sun. Filters stay on the entire time, with no totality.
How to watch safely →South America, Spain & Portugal
Visible: eastern North America, Central and South America, western Europe, northwest Africa. Path through Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Suriname, then Spain and Portugal.
Spain’s third eclipse in three years. Up to 7m10s of annularity in Andalusia.
How to watch safely →Australia & New Zealand
Visible: Southeast Asia, the East Indies, Australia and New Zealand. Totality crosses Australia and New Zealand.
The path crosses a major Australian population centre — a rare thing for a total eclipse.
How to watch safely →Mediterranean, Russia & Japan
Visible: Europe, north Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Arctic and Alaska. Path through Algeria, Tunisia, Greece, Turkey, Russia, northern China and Japan.
A long annular track across some very accessible European and Asian territory.
How to watch safely →Southern Africa & Australia
Visible: southern Africa, the southern Indian Ocean, the East Indies, Australia and Antarctica. Totality in Botswana, South Africa and Australia.
Southern-hemisphere summer, and a good excuse for a dark-sky trip either side of the eclipse.
How to watch safely →New Year’s Eve “blood moon”
Visible: Africa, Europe, Asia, the Indian Ocean, Australia, the Pacific and northwestern North America.
About 1h12m of totality. No filters and no equipment needed — lunar eclipses are completely safe to watch with the naked eye.
Best viewed with binoculars →Africa, Europe, Asia & Australia
Visible: Africa, Europe, Asia, the Indian Ocean, Australia and the western Pacific.
About 39% of the Moon enters Earth’s umbra — a clear, obvious bite out of the disc.
Best viewed with binoculars →Americas, Europe & Africa
Visible: the eastern Pacific, North and South America, the Atlantic, Europe, Africa and western Asia.
Only about 7% of the Moon is covered — subtle, and one for the completists.
Best viewed with binoculars →Pacific & the Americas
Visible: eastern Australia, the Pacific, North and South America, the Atlantic and western Africa.
About 55% into the penumbra. A faint shading rather than a bite — easy to miss if you are not watching for it.
Best viewed with binoculars →Africa, Asia & Australia
Visible: eastern Africa, Asia, the Indian Ocean, Australia and the western Pacific.
Barely an eclipse at all — only 0.3% of the Moon touches the penumbra. Listed for completeness; you will not see anything.
Best viewed with binoculars →Americas, Europe, Africa & Asia
Visible: eastern North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and western Australia.
About 93% into the penumbra — deep enough that a careful observer should notice one limb dimming.
Best viewed with binoculars →Quadrantids
Best from: the northern hemisphere. Up to 80 meteors an hour at peak.
A sharp, short peak — only a few hours wide, so the exact night matters more than for any other shower.
What you need →Lyrids
Best from: the northern hemisphere. Up to 18 meteors an hour.
Modest numbers but known for occasional bright fireballs, and it breaks the long gap after the winter showers.
What you need →Eta Aquariids
Best from: the southern hemisphere and the tropics. Up to 50 meteors an hour.
Debris from Halley’s Comet. Fast meteors with long trains, best in the hours before dawn.
What you need →Southern Delta Aquariids
Best from: the southern hemisphere and southern latitudes of the north. Up to 25 an hour.
A broad, gentle peak that overlaps with the start of Perseid activity — late July can be quietly rewarding.
What you need →Perseids
Best from: the northern hemisphere. Up to 100 meteors an hour at peak.
The most-watched shower of the year, mainly because it happens on warm August nights. No equipment needed — a reclining chair beats a telescope.
What you need →Orionids
Best from: both hemispheres. Up to 20 meteors an hour.
The second shower fed by Halley’s Comet. Fast and often bright, radiating near Orion’s raised club.
What you need →Leonids
Best from: the northern hemisphere. Around 15 meteors an hour in a typical year.
Ordinary most years, but the Leonids are the shower that occasionally produces genuine storms decades apart.
What you need →Geminids
Best from: both hemispheres, better in the north. Up to 150 meteors an hour — the richest of the year.
Technically the best shower there is, and the least watched, because December nights are cold. Dress for it and it outperforms the Perseids.
What you need →Ursids
Best from: the northern hemisphere. Around 10 meteors an hour.
Small and often ignored, arriving right after the Geminids. Circumpolar radiant, so it is up all night.
What you need →North & Central America
Visible: North America and Central America.
Partial only — filters stay on throughout. One of four partial eclipses in 2029, a year with no total or annular at all.
How to watch safely →Arctic & Scandinavia
Visible: the Arctic, Scandinavia, Alaska, northern Asia and northern Canada.
A high-latitude partial, worth combining with a summer dark-sky trip even though the nights are short.
How to watch safely →Africa, India & Indonesia
Visible: Africa, southern Asia, the East Indies and Australia. Path through Angola, Congo, Zambia, Tanzania, southern India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
A very long annular track across densely populated territory — easy to reach from several major hubs.
How to watch safely →Pacific & Panama
Visible: the Pacific, the southern United States, Central America and northwest South America. Path over the Pacific and Panama.
A hybrid — the rarest kind, shifting between annular and total along its own track as Earth’s curvature changes the distance.
How to watch safely →South Atlantic
Visible: southern South America and southern Africa. The annular path falls over the South Atlantic.
Annularity is mostly at sea, so from land this is a partial for almost everyone.
How to watch safely →Asia
Visible: across Asia.
Partial throughout. Ten days later comes the transit of Mercury — a good fortnight for anyone with a solar filter.
How to watch safely →Alaska & eastern Russia
Visible: North America. Totality crosses eastern Russia and Alaska.
The next total eclipse to touch the United States after 2024 — though reaching the path means going a long way north in March.
How to watch safely →Nigeria to China
Visible: Africa, Europe and western Asia. Totality runs from Nigeria across Africa and the Middle East to China.
An enormous track across three continents, and the next big one for eclipse chasers after 2027.
How to watch safely →Andes to Brazil
Visible: Central and South America. Path through Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.
The Atacama end of this track is among the driest, clearest observing country on Earth.
How to watch safely →New Zealand & the South Pacific
Visible: Australia, New Zealand, the south Pacific, Mexico and Antarctica. Annular path through New Zealand and the Pacific.
A ring of fire over New Zealand, which does not get many of these.
How to watch safely →China, Korea & Japan
Visible: east Asia and the Pacific. Totality crosses China, Korea and Japan.
The path passes close to some of the largest cities on the planet, which will make it one of the most-watched eclipses in history.
How to watch safely →Canada, Arctic & western Europe
Visible: Alaska, Canada, the Arctic, western Europe and northwest Africa.
A wide partial reaching the UK, Ireland and Iberia — the sort of event worth a filter even though there is no totality.
How to watch safely →Australia & New Zealand
Visible: the East Indies, Australia and the Pacific. Totality crosses Australia and New Zealand.
Australian winter, which usually means the clearest skies of the year in the interior.
How to watch safely →Caribbean & Africa
Visible: eastern North America, northern South America, the Atlantic, Africa and Europe. Path through Cuba, the Dominican Republic and across Africa.
A ring of fire over the Caribbean in January — about as pleasant as eclipse chasing gets.
How to watch safely →Colombia to Kenya
Visible: North, Central and South America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Path from Colombia across the Atlantic to Kenya.
An unusually long annular track spanning two continents and an ocean.
How to watch safely →Boxing Day totality — Australia
Visible: southeast Asia, the East Indies, Australia, New Zealand, the south Pacific and Antarctica.
Australia’s third total in just over a decade. The country becomes the world’s best eclipse destination in the 2030s.
How to watch safely →Alaska & the Nordic countries
Visible: North America and western Europe. Path through Alaska, northern Canada and the Nordic countries.
A ring of fire on the summer solstice, at latitudes where the Sun barely sets.
How to watch safely →North & Central America
Visible: North and Central America.
Partial throughout — filters on from first contact to last.
How to watch safely →Americas, Europe & Africa
Visible: the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
A well-placed total for the Atlantic world. No filters, no equipment — just a clear view of the Moon.
Best with binoculars →Midwinter total — almost worldwide
Visible: the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia.
Two total lunar eclipses in one year, and this one is visible from most of the inhabited world.
Best with binoculars →Europe, Africa, Asia & Australia
Visible: Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
A clear partial bite out of the Moon, easy to photograph with an ordinary camera on a tripod.
Best with binoculars →Americas, Europe, Africa & Asia
Visible: the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia.
Penumbral only — a subtle shading on one limb rather than a visible bite.
Best with binoculars →Jupiter at its best for the year
Visible: worldwide. Jupiter rises at sunset and is up all night.
Closest and brightest of the year. Cloud belts and the four Galilean moons are easy in almost any telescope, and the moons visibly shift within a single evening.
How to see Jupiter →Mars at opposition — eight days after Jupiter
Visible: worldwide, all night.
Mars only reaches opposition every 26 months, and this one lands in the same fortnight as Jupiter’s. February 2027 is the best planetary week of the decade so far.
How to see Mars →Saturn and its rings
Visible: worldwide, all night.
The single most reliable “wow” in amateur astronomy. Even a 100 mm telescope separates the rings from the disc.
How to see Saturn’s rings →Mars returns
Visible: worldwide, all night.
The next Mars opposition after 2027. Between these dates Mars is a small orange dot and little more — opposition is the only time it repays a telescope.
How to see Mars →Mars at opposition
Visible: worldwide, all night.
Oppositions vary a lot in quality because Mars’s orbit is noticeably elliptical — some are far closer than others.
How to see Mars →Mercury crosses the Sun
Visible: Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, weather permitting.
A tiny black dot creeping across the solar disc over several hours. Happens only about 13 times a century. Needs a certified full-aperture solar filter — the dot is far too small to see with eclipse glasses.
You need a solar filter →The next Mercury transit
Visible: the Americas, Europe and Africa.
After 2032, this is the only Mercury transit before the 2040s. Same rule: full-aperture filter, never an eyepiece filter.
You need a solar filter →Jupiter meets Saturn again
Visible: worldwide, low in the evening sky.
The first great conjunction since the famous one of December 2020. They pair up roughly every twenty years, but rarely as tightly as in 2020 — that was the closest since 1623.
Binoculars frame it best →Halley’s Comet returns
Visible: worldwide, and far better placed than the disappointing 1986 apparition.
The most famous comet in history reaches perihelion on 28 July 2061. After that it does not come back until 2134 — so for anyone alive today, 2061 is the one chance.
Comets are a binocular object →The next great comet — date unknown
Visible: impossible to say in advance.
Here is the honest position: the genuinely spectacular comets are not on any calendar. Hale-Bopp and NEOWISE were both discovered shortly before they performed. Periodic comets we can predict are mostly faint. The only useful preparation is owning binoculars and knowing your sky, so that when one is announced with a few weeks’ notice you are ready.
Be ready with binoculars →East Africa, Asia & Australia
Visible: eastern Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific.
A proper total — the Moon turns copper for the better part of an hour. Nothing needed but clear sky and your eyes.
Best with binoculars →Africa, Europe, Asia & Australia
Visible: Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Well placed for European evenings. Two total lunar eclipses in 2032, and this is the one most of the Old World gets.
Best with binoculars →Europe, Africa, Asia & Australia
Visible: Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
Spring total for Europe. A camera on a tripod with a modest zoom captures the colour easily — no telescope required.
Best with binoculars →Asia, Australia & the Americas
Visible: Asia, Australia, the Pacific and the Americas.
The Pacific rim gets this one. Totality is safe to watch unfiltered from start to finish, unlike anything solar.
Best with binoculars →Almost the whole world
Visible: the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and western Australia.
One of the best-placed lunar eclipses of the decade — visible from nearly every inhabited continent.
Best with binoculars →Americas, Europe & Africa
Visible: the Americas, Europe, Africa and western Asia.
A warm-weather total for the Atlantic world, and an easy one to share with people who own no equipment at all.
Best with binoculars →Americas, Europe & Africa
Visible: the Americas, Europe and Africa.
A visible bite out of the disc rather than full colour, but still obvious to the naked eye.
Best with binoculars →Americas, Europe & the Middle East
Visible: the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Partial, on an August night — good conditions for watching outdoors for the couple of hours it takes.
Best with binoculars →Americas, Europe & Africa
Visible: the Americas, Europe and Africa.
Penumbral — a faint shading only. Listed for completeness rather than as a night to plan around.
East Indies, Australia & the Pacific
Visible: the East Indies, Australia and the Pacific.
Penumbral only. Worth knowing about, not worth setting an alarm for.
The Americas
Visible: the Americas.
Penumbral. A careful observer may notice one limb dimming slightly; most people will not.
Europe, Africa, Asia & Australia
Visible: Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
Penumbral only — two weeks after the great Nigeria-to-China total solar eclipse of that March.
East Asia, the Pacific & the Americas
Visible: eastern Asia, the Pacific and the Americas.
Penumbral. Useful mainly as a reminder that the Moon is full and deep-sky observing will be poor that week.
Southern Chile & Argentina
Visible: southern Chile and southern Argentina.
Partial only, over Patagonia. Filters on throughout — there is no safe moment in a partial eclipse.
How to watch safely →Patagonia & Antarctica
Visible: southern Argentina, southern Chile and Antarctica.
The fourth and last partial of 2029 — a year with no total or annular eclipse anywhere on Earth.
How to watch safely →Southern South America
Visible: southern South America and Antarctica.
Partial. Six months after the Alaska total — eclipses come in pairs about half a year apart.
How to watch safely →Southern Australia & New Zealand
Visible: Antarctica, southern Australia and New Zealand.
Partial. One of three solar eclipses in 2036, none of them total.
How to watch safely →A marginal eclipse over Antarctica
Visible: only the Antarctic coast, near the greatest-eclipse point at 69°S, 4°E.
Magnitude just 0.20 — the shallowest partial on this calendar, and the third of the three 2036 solar eclipses. Essentially unobservable outside polar research stations.
Arctic Scandinavia
Visible: northern Scandinavia and the wider Arctic, greatest eclipse near Sweden’s Kiruna region (68°N).
A moderate partial — magnitude 0.71. Low sun and deep winter, so dress for it.
How to watch safely →Totality over the Ross Ice Shelf
Visible: Antarctica only, greatest eclipse near the Ross Ice Shelf (81°S), close to McMurdo Station.
1m51s of totality — but reaching it means joining a polar expedition, not a trip most people will make.
Southern Ocean, South of New Zealand
Visible: the Southern Ocean south of New Zealand; the South Island may catch a shallow partial near sunrise.
Magnitude 0.53 at greatest eclipse — closes out a run of hard-to-reach, high-latitude eclipses through the late 2030s.
Americas, Europe & Africa
Visible: broadly across the Americas, Europe and Africa — check local moonrise/moonset times near the date.
1h03m of totality. No filters or equipment needed, just clear skies.
Asia, Australia & the Pacific
Visible: broadly across Asia, Australia and the Pacific — check local moonrise/moonset times near the date.
A long one: over 3 hours of partial umbral phase.
The Americas & the Pacific
Visible: broadly across the Americas and the Pacific — check local moonrise/moonset times near the date.
Nearly 3 hours of partial umbral phase.
The Americas, Europe & the Pacific
Visible: broadly across the Americas and the Pacific, touching western Europe and Africa — check local moonrise/moonset times near the date.
Over 3 hours of partial umbral phase, one of the longer partials on this calendar.
Almost Half the Globe
Visible: broadly across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia — check local moonrise/moonset times near the date.
1h32m of totality, one of the longest on this calendar.
The Americas & the Pacific
Visible: broadly across the Americas and the Pacific — check local moonrise/moonset times near the date.
1h27m of totality, closing out this calendar’s eclipse horizon through 2040.
Totality returns to Spain
Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain — Bilbao, Santander, Valladolid, Zaragoza, Valencia.
Mainland Europe’s first total solar eclipse since 1999, and the opening act of Spain’s run of three eclipses in three years.
Next: 2 Aug 2027 →The Great North American Eclipse
Mexico, the United States from Texas to Maine, and eastern Canada.
Tens of millions inside the path. Also the eclipse that produced a counterfeit-glasses scandal — the reason we are so insistent about certification.
Buy certified, not cheap →James Webb’s first images
Released worldwide.
The deepest infrared view of the universe ever taken, and the moment a generation’s expectations of what a “space photo” looks like were reset.
The Great Conjunction
Worldwide, low in the evening twilight.
Jupiter and Saturn came closer together than at any time since 1623 — close enough to fit in a single telescope field with their moons.
Comet NEOWISE
Northern hemisphere, naked eye at dawn and then dusk.
Discovered only months before it performed — the textbook example of why the great comets never appear on a calendar in advance.
Comets are a binocular object →The first photograph of a black hole
Released worldwide by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration.
The supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy M87, imaged by linking radio telescopes across the planet into one Earth-sized instrument.
The Great American Eclipse
Coast to coast across the United States, Oregon to South Carolina.
The first totality to cross the entire mainland US since 1918, and the event that turned eclipse chasing into a mass hobby.
How to watch safely →The Chelyabinsk meteor
Southern Urals, Russia.
An undetected object roughly 20 metres across exploded in the atmosphere in daylight, injuring around 1,500 people. The most-filmed impact event in history, and a blunt reminder that we do not see everything coming.
The last transit of Venus
Pacific, Asia, Australia, and parts of the Americas and Europe.
Venus crossed the Sun as a small black disc. The next one is in 2117 — nobody reading this will see another.
Transit of Venus
Europe, Africa and Asia.
The first transit of Venus since 1882. They come in pairs eight years apart, then not for over a century.
Europe’s last great eclipse
Cornwall, northern France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Turkey.
Watched by more people than any eclipse before it. Mainland Europe then waited 27 years for the next one, in 2026.
Comet Hale–Bopp at perihelion
Worldwide, naked eye for a remarkable 18 months.
The most widely observed comet of the twentieth century, and bright enough to cut through city light pollution — which almost never happens.
Comets are a binocular object →The first exoplanet round a Sun-like star
Announced from the Haute-Provence Observatory, France.
51 Pegasi b — a gas giant orbiting its star in four days. It broke every model of how planetary systems form, and won a Nobel Prize 24 years later.
Shoemaker–Levy 9 hits Jupiter
Visible in amateur telescopes worldwide.
A comet torn into fragments slammed into Jupiter over six days, leaving dark scars larger than Earth that backyard observers could see for weeks.
Supernova 1987A
Southern hemisphere — the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The nearest supernova since 1604, and the first whose neutrinos were detected on Earth — hours before the light arrived.
Halley’s Comet, last seen
Worldwide, but badly placed.
The most anticipated and most disappointing comet apparition of the century — Earth and Halley were on opposite sides of the Sun at the worst moment. The 2061 return will be far better.
Apollo 11 lands on the Moon
The Sea of Tranquility — watched from everywhere.
You cannot see the landing sites through a telescope, whatever the aperture. But you can point one at the Sea of Tranquility, which is most of the appeal.
See the Moon properly →Pluto discovered
Lowell Observatory, Arizona.
Clyde Tombaugh, 24 years old, found it by blinking between photographic plates — a needle-in-a-haystack search done entirely by eye.
The eclipse that proved Einstein right
Príncipe, off West Africa, and Sobral, Brazil.
Eddington’s expeditions measured starlight bending around the eclipsed Sun and confirmed general relativity. Arguably the most consequential eclipse ever observed.
Neptune found by mathematics
Berlin Observatory.
Predicted on paper from irregularities in Uranus’s orbit, then found within a degree of the predicted spot on the first night of looking.
Galileo sees Jupiter’s moons
Padua, Italy.
Four points of light that moved night after night, proving not everything orbits the Earth. His telescope was worse than any beginner instrument sold today — you can repeat the observation this week.
Repeat it yourself →The guest star of 1054
Recorded by Chinese astronomers, and visible worldwide.
A supernova bright enough to see in daylight for weeks. Its wreckage is the Crab Nebula, still visible in a modest telescope nearly a thousand years later.
OSIRIS-REx brings home a piece of an asteroid
A capsule landed in the Utah desert, watched worldwide.
The first US mission to return a sample from an asteroid — about 120 grams of Bennu, collected in 2020 and now in labs on Earth.
Humanity deliberately hits an asteroid
Followed live from mission control and observatories worldwide.
NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed into the moonlet Dimorphos on purpose, shortening its orbit — the first real test of planetary defense.
First close-up of Pluto
Images relayed back over four and a half hours, one way.
NASA’s New Horizons flew past Pluto after a nine-year journey, finally turning it from a blurry dot into a world with mountains and glaciers.
The Hubble Space Telescope launches
Carried to orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, mission STS-31.
A blurry start — a flawed mirror needed a 1993 repair mission — but Hubble went on to reshape how we see the universe.
Voyager 1’s closest approach to Jupiter
Images and data radioed back across roughly 40 light-minutes.
The first close, detailed pictures of Jupiter and its moons — including the discovery of active volcanoes on Io.
Ceres is discovered
Spotted from Palermo, Sicily, by Giuseppe Piazzi.
The first object found in what became the asteroid belt — now classed as a dwarf planet, and the largest body between Mars and Jupiter.
William Herschel discovers Uranus
Spotted from his garden in Bath, England, with a home-built telescope.
The first planet found with a telescope rather than the naked eye — and it doubled the known size of the solar system overnight.
SN 1006, the brightest star ever recorded
Recorded by observers across China, Japan, Iraq, Egypt and Europe.
The brightest stellar event in recorded history — bright enough to cast shadows and read by at night for weeks. Its remnant is still visible to radio and X-ray telescopes today.