Total solar eclipse of July 13, 2037

The path of totality

Western Australia and the Red Centre, from mid-morning to noon

Queensland, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, in the early afternoon

New Zealand's North Island, in the late afternoon

Times along the path

Local clock times, in the order totality arrives; Western Australia's clocks run an hour and a half behind the Northern Territory's and two hours behind Queensland's. Totality reaches Geraldton at 9:41 AM, Uluru at 11:45 AM, Brisbane at 1:16 PM and Lord Howe Island at 1:58 PM local time, and Napier at 3:48 PM, some two hours after Geraldton.

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. July is winter in Australia and New Zealand, so the Sun stays in the northern sky. In Western Australia totality comes in the mid-morning with the Sun some 26 to 37° up in the north-east; around Uluru and across Queensland near midday, some 35 to 45° up in the north. In New Zealand it comes in the late afternoon with the Sun only 12 to 13° up in the north-west, so choose a spot with a clear view low 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, as over the North Island; each place's own answer comes from Astronomy Engine. Totality is short near the path's edges: if your spot is near one, as Brisbane, Alice Springs and Birdsville 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), March 20, 2034 (Nigeria to Kashmir) and September 2, 2035 (Beijing, North Korea and Japan), 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 annular eclipse of January 5, 2038, crosses Cuba, Haiti, the Windward Islands and West Africa from Côte d'Ivoire to Niger: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.