Moon · 6 of 8

Eclipses

When is the next eclipse you can see from home?

The Moon across the Sun and the Earth's shadow across the Moon: the next total, annular and lunar eclipses, why they line up, and the next ones you can see from home.

You’ll be able to say why eclipses line up as they do, and when you can next see one from home.

13 steps · about 10 min

Before this: The Moon's Month (6 min)

Where and which night

Working out when this is best placed from where you are…

Where

Which night

Date

Time

Kept for this guide only, until you change it here — your map settings, and every other guide, stay as they are.

Print, play outside or present

Present on a big screen

Sources

NASA Eclipse Web Site (Espenak) — Solar Eclipses: 2021 to 2030: gamma, the point of greatest eclipse and the central durations this page's eclipses are tested against
NASA Eclipse Web Site (Espenak) — Lunar Eclipses: 2021 to 2030: umbral and penumbral magnitudes and the durations of totality
Espenak & Meeus, Five Millennium Canon of Lunar Eclipses, NASA/TP-2009-214172 — Danjon's rule for the size of the Earth's shadow
Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, 2nd ed. (1998), ch. 25 and 47 — the Sun's and the Moon's positions and distances
NASA Science: Eclipse safety — solar viewers for every partial phase, and the naked eye only in totality
NASA Moon Fact Sheet — the Moon's 1737.4 km radius and its 356,400 to 406,700 km range of distance

← GUIDES

The next total eclipse of the Sun, from the middle of its path: the readout says when and where. An hour before totality the Moon has taken a bite from the Sun's western edge. Never look at a partly covered Sun without eclipse glasses — even a sliver burns.

Run the last hour; watch the readout too.

Totality. The Moon covers the whole face of the Sun, and what its glare always hid comes out: the corona, the Sun's outer atmosphere, a million times fainter than the face. For these few minutes, and only these, it is safe to look without a filter.

Pull back. Day turns to deep twilight, and the brightest planets and stars are out. You stand in the Moon's shadow, a patch a few hundred kilometres wide racing east; beyond it the sky is still lit, so the horizon glows all round like a sunset.

The next annular eclipse. The Sun is 400 times wider than the Moon and 400 times farther away, so they look the same size — but the Moon's orbit is an ellipse, and near its farthest, its , it is too small to cover the Sun: a ring of fire.

The next total eclipse of the Moon: the Earth between the Sun and a full Moon, which is moving into our shadow. Its edge is curved at every eclipse — Aristotle's evidence that the Earth is a sphere. The whole night side can watch, unfiltered.

Run it into totality. The Moon moves east into the umbra, the shadow's dark core, a little over its own width an hour. The part outside still shines white; the part inside turns not black but a dim copper red.

Totality. The Moon glows red because the Earth's air bends sunlight into the shadow and takes the blue out first: it is lit by every sunrise and sunset on Earth at once. And with the full Moon's glare gone, the faint stars come back around it.

At an eclipse of the Sun the Moon is between: new, its shadow on the Earth. Under the wide soft patch the eclipse is partial; only the small ringed spot is totality. Run two hours and watch it race along the path.

At an eclipse of the Moon the Earth is between: the Moon is full, on the far end of the line, inside our shadow. Most months it misses — its ring is tilted 5.15° and it passes above or below the line. The Eclipse Seasons lesson follows that.

Nodes and eclipse seasons, from Eclipse Seasons

Now your next eclipse of the Moon, from home: no travel, no filter. The readout says when, and how deep into the shadow it goes from where you stand.

And your next eclipse of the Sun from home — almost always a partial, a bite like this. Use eclipse glasses, or hold up a colander: every hole throws a little crescent Sun on the ground.

Three bodies in a line, from outside: which one stands in the middle decides whose eclipse it is.

Of the Sun, a new Moon in between
Of the Moon, the Earth between it and the Sun
Most months the tilted ring misses the line

Eclipses

Settings

Screen

Clock and voice

Change place