Total solar eclipse of March 20, 2034

The path of totality

Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, in the late morning

Kuwait, the Gulf and southern Iran, in the afternoon

Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir, in the late afternoon

Times along the path

Local clock times, in the order totality arrives. It reaches Lagos at 10:18 AM and N'Djamena at 10:52 AM, about half an hour later. It reaches Egypt's Red Sea coast at Berenice at 12:58 PM and Shiraz at 3:02 PM Iran time. Islamabad sees it at 4:51 PM, and Srinagar at 5:22 PM Indian time, some two and a half hours after Lagos.

Near the path: a partial eclipse

Watching it safely

• Look at the Sun only through eclipse glasses or a handheld solar viewer made to the ISO 12312-2 standard. Ordinary sunglasses, however dark, are not safe.
• Take the glasses off only during totality, once the Sun is completely covered, and put them back on as soon as the first bright light returns. Outside the path of totality the glasses stay on the whole time.
• Never look through a camera, binoculars or a telescope without a solar filter fitted over the front, even while wearing eclipse glasses.
• Without glasses, watch the partial phases indirectly: a pinhole in a card, or the holes of a colander, projects the crescent Sun onto the ground with the Sun behind you.

This follows NASA's eclipse safety guidance. In Nigeria and Chad totality comes in the late morning with the Sun high in the sky. From Iran eastwards it comes in the afternoon with the Sun in the south-west, and over Pakistan and Kashmir the Sun is low in the west-southwest, so choose a spot with a clear view that way.

How these times are worked out

The path, its width and the greatest eclipse come from NASA's predictions by Fred Espenak (GSFC). The times for each place are computed with Astronomy Engine, which treats the Sun and Moon as smooth spheres. NASA notes that the Moon's mountains and valleys shift the edges of the path by 1 to 3 km and change the duration by 1 to 3 seconds, so durations here are rounded down to 10 seconds. Predictions that follow the Moon's edge in detail can still come a few seconds shorter. Near sunrise and sunset the shadow moves faster than NASA's table, with a row every two minutes, can follow, so the map draws the path's edges there as straight lines; each place's own answer comes from Astronomy Engine. The path is narrow: if your spot is near an edge, check NASA's map before you travel.

The eclipses before this one have their own paths and times: the total solar eclipses of August 2, 2027 (southern Spain, North Africa and Egypt), July 22, 2028 (Australia and New Zealand), November 25, 2030 (South Africa and Australia) and March 30, 2033 (Alaska), the annular eclipses of January 26, 2028 (the Amazon, Portugal and Spain), June 1, 2030 (Greece, Istanbul, Siberia and Hokkaido) and May 21, 2031 (Tanzania, southern India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia), and the hybrid eclipse of November 14, 2031 (the Pacific and Panama). The next one, the annular eclipse of September 12, 2034, crosses northern Chile, Bolivia, northern Argentina, Paraguay and southern Brazil: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.