Annular solar eclipse of July 2, 2038

The path of the ring

Colombia, in the early morning

Venezuela, Margarita, Grenada and Barbados, in the morning

Times along the path

Local clock times, in the order the ring arrives. Venezuela's clocks run an hour ahead of Colombia's, so the ring reaches Arauca at 6:42 AM and Guasdualito, just over the border, at 7:42 AM, almost the same moment. In Africa, Algeria, Niger and Chad keep UTC+1, Sudan and South Sudan UTC+2, and Ethiopia and Kenya UTC+3: the ring reaches Arlit at 3:53 PM, Goz Beïda at 4:14 PM and Turmi, in Ethiopia's Omo valley, at 6:23 PM.

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. In Colombia the ring comes soon after sunrise with the Sun only about 10° up in the east-northeast, so choose a spot with a clear, low view that way, away from the mountains to the east; in Venezuela and on Barbados the Sun is some 15 to 30° up. Over the Sahara it comes in the afternoon with the Sun high, then lower further east, about 24° up in the west-northwest at Goz Beïda and only a few degrees above the horizon in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya.

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, and within about 10 km of an edge they read "up to". Predictions that follow the Moon's edge in detail can still come a few seconds shorter. The path is narrow: if your spot is near an edge, as Armenia, Porlamar, Grenada's south coast and Bridgetown are, check NASA's map before you travel, and go towards the red line for the full ring.

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), September 2, 2035 (Beijing, North Korea and Japan) and July 13, 2037 (Australia and New Zealand), 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), March 9, 2035 (New Zealand) and January 5, 2038 (Cuba, Haiti, the Windward Islands and West Africa), and the hybrid eclipse of November 14, 2031 (the Pacific and Panama). The next one, the total eclipse of December 26, 2038, crosses South Australia, northern Victoria and New Zealand from Golden Bay to Palmerston North: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.