Almanac · Eclipses
Annular solar eclipse, 17 Feb 2026
The Moon is too far to cover the whole Sun, and leaves a ring of it along a narrow path, with a partial eclipse either side. Greatest eclipse was on Tue 17 Feb 2026 at 12:12 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 64.7°S 86.3°E, the Sun 12° up
- Magnitude 0.963 The Moon’s apparent diameter over the Sun’s there
- Longest Annularity 2m18s At the point of greatest eclipse
- Gamma -0.9738 The shadow’s axis from the Earth’s centre, in Earth radii
Where to watch it
Port Louis, Mauritius sees the most of it of any city on our list: 32% of the Sun hidden, with the Sun 15° up. The Moon first touches the Sun there at 16:39 local time (GMT+4).
The Sky Map opens in Port Louis at 16:29 GMT+4 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.
- Port Louis, Mauritius 32% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 15° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+4 Watch from here
- Ambovombe, Madagascar 29% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 29° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+3 Watch from here
- Antananarivo, Madagascar 20% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 24° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+3 Watch from here
- Durban, South Africa 16% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 45° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+2 Watch from here
- Antsiranana, Madagascar 11% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 19° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+3 Watch from here
- Beira, Mozambique 8% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 38° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+2 Watch from here
- Nampula, Mozambique 7% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 31° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+2 Watch from here
- Cape Town, South Africa 5% of the Sun hidden, the Sun 58° up Begins · Deepest · Ends GMT+2 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° | from 59°E to 69°E | 13:52 | 0.043 | Partial: at most 1% of the Sun hidden, at 66°E, the Sun -1° up |
| 15°S | from 30°E to 85°E | 13:34 | 0.431 | Partial: at most 31% of the Sun hidden, at 74°E, the Sun -1° up |
| 30°S | from 15°E to 96°E | 13:12 | 0.736 | Partial: at most 66% of the Sun hidden, at 83°E, the Sun -1° up |
| 45°S | from 3°W to 109°E | 12:46 | 0.938 | Partial: at most 90% of the Sun hidden, at 94°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 annular 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)