Almanac · Eclipses
Partial solar eclipse, 21 Sep 2025
The Moon’s shadow misses the Earth’s centre, so nowhere sees more than a partial eclipse. Greatest eclipse was on Sun 21 Sep 2025 at 19:41 UTC. The next eclipse of the Sun is the annular solar eclipse of 6 Feb 2027.
Never look at the Sun without eclipse glasses.
- Greatest eclipse At 61.1°S 153.5°E, the Sun 0° up
- Magnitude 0.856 The share of the Sun’s diameter covered there
- Gamma -1.0647 The shadow’s axis from the Earth’s centre, in Earth radii
Where to watch it
Palmerston North, New Zealand sees the most of it of any city on our list: 65% of the Sun hidden, with the Sun 10° up. The Moon first touches the Sun there at 05:57 local time (GMT+12).
The Sky Map opens in Palmerston North at 05:47 GMT+12 there, on the Sun: press play on the time bar to watch it unfold. Your own place stays as it is.
City by city
The biggest cities on our list that see at least 5% of the Sun hidden, the most first. Every time is the city’s own clock.
- Palmerston North, New Zealand 65% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 10° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+12 Watch from here
- Christchurch, New Zealand 69% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 8° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+12 Watch from here
- Auckland, New Zealand 61% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 8° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+12 Watch from here
- Nuku'alofa, Tonga 32% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 12° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+13 Watch from here
- Suva, Fiji 28% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 5° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+12 Watch from here
- Nouméa, New Caledonia 27% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 0° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+11 Watch from here
- Avarua (Rarotonga), Cook Islands 23% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 28° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT-10 Watch from here
- Apia, Samoa 17% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 14° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+13 Watch from here
- Papeete, French Polynesia 9% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 38° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT-10 Watch from here
Latitude by latitude
Along each latitude, the longitudes that see any of the eclipse with the Sun up, and where on that latitude it is deepest: how much of the Sun’s face is hidden there, when, and how high the Sun stands.
| Latitude | Seen | Deepest (UTC) | Magnitude | At its deepest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60°N | Not seen | — | — | Not seen: the Moon’s shadow misses this latitude while the Sun is up |
| 45°N | Not seen | — | — | Not seen: the Moon’s shadow misses this latitude while the Sun is up |
| 30°N | Not seen | — | — | Not seen: the Moon’s shadow misses this latitude while the Sun is up |
| 15°N | Not seen | — | — | Not seen: the Moon’s shadow misses this latitude while the Sun is up |
| 0° | Not seen | — | — | Not seen: the Moon’s shadow misses this latitude while the Sun is up |
| 15°S | from 162°E to 141°W | 18:18 | 0.332 | Partial: at most 21% of the Sun hidden, at 174°E, the Sun 0° up |
| 30°S | from 154°E to 128°W | 18:41 | 0.611 | Partial: at most 51% of the Sun hidden, at 169°E, the Sun 1° up |
| 45°S | from 146°E to 112°W | 19:09 | 0.790 | Partial: at most 72% of the Sun hidden, at 162°E, the Sun 0° up |
How we worked it out: the Sun’s and the Moon’s places are Meeus’s solar and lunar theories, the ones the map draws. Greatest eclipse is the instant the shadow’s axis passes nearest the Earth’s centre, and the magnitude and the length of the total phase are measured from the place it meets the ground. Each latitude is walked 1° of longitude at a time on the Moon’s shadow cones, every 2 minutes, then refined where the eclipse is deepest with the Sun up. The tests hold these to NASA’s Five Millennium Canon of eclipses: instants within a few minutes, magnitudes within a few thousandths, the central duration within seconds.
- F. Espenak and J. Meeus, NASA Five Millennium Canon of Solar and Lunar Eclipses, which the tests hold these to
- J. Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, ch. 25 (the Sun) and ch. 47 (the Moon), as the map draws them
- Danjon’s rule for the Earth’s shadow, as NASA’s lunar eclipse catalogue applies it (NASA/TP-2009-214172, §1.3)