Total solar eclipse of September 2, 2035

The path of totality

Inner Mongolia, Beijing and the Bohai Sea, in the early morning

The Liaodong Peninsula and North Korea, in the mid-morning

Central Japan, in the mid-morning

Times along the path

Local clock times, in the order totality arrives. China's clocks run an hour behind those of Korea and Japan. Totality reaches Jiayuguan at 8:20 AM and Beijing at 8:33 AM, Pyongyang at 9:44 AM Korean time and Mito at 10:08 AM Japan time, under an hour after it passes Ruoqiang.

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 western China totality comes soon after sunrise with the Sun low in the east, so choose a spot with a clear view to the east; by Beijing the Sun is some 30° up. Over Korea and Japan it comes in the mid-morning, some 40 to 55° up in the south-east.

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 Tangshan and Narita are, check NASA's map before you travel, and go towards the red line for the longest totality.

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), May 21, 2031 (Tanzania, southern India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia), September 12, 2034 (northern Chile to southern Brazil) and March 9, 2035 (New Zealand), and the hybrid eclipse of November 14, 2031 (the Pacific and Panama). The next one, the total eclipse of July 13, 2037, crosses Australia from Geraldton by Uluru to Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and New Zealand's North Island: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.