Annular solar eclipse of September 12, 2034

The path of the ring

Northern Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay, in the early afternoon

Rio Grande do Sul, in the afternoon

Times along the path

Local clock times, in the order the ring arrives. Bolivia's clocks run an hour behind Chile's and Argentina's, so the ring reaches Bolivia at about 12:40 PM local time, some ten minutes after Iquique sees it at 1:28 PM. It reaches Humahuaca at 1:45 PM, Pilar at 2:06 PM and Porto Alegre at 2:24 PM, about an hour after Iquique.

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.
• An annular eclipse never covers the whole Sun, so the glasses stay on the whole time, during the ring too.
• 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 it indirectly: a pinhole in a card, or the holes of a colander, projects the crescent and then the ring onto the ground with the Sun behind you.

This follows NASA's eclipse safety guidance. From northern Chile to Paraguay the ring comes in the early afternoon with the Sun some 55 to 66° up in the north, so almost any open spot will do; in Rio Grande do Sul the Sun stands some 45 to 50° up in the north-west.

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, as La Quiaca, Santa Maria and Canoas are, 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), March 30, 2033 (Alaska) and March 20, 2034 (Nigeria to Kashmir), 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 March 9, 2035, crosses Cook Strait and the Wellington region of New Zealand on the morning of March 10, local time: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.