Total solar eclipse of December 26, 2038

The path of totality

South Australia and Victoria, in the late morning

New Zealand, in the early afternoon

Times along the path

Local clock times on Sunday, December 26, in the order totality arrives. In December South Australia keeps daylight saving time half an hour behind Victoria and New South Wales, Western Australia keeps standard time three hours behind them, and New Zealand's daylight time is two hours ahead: totality reaches Onslow at 7:27 AM, Whyalla at 10:31 AM, Swan Hill at 11:13 AM and Palmerston North at 2:22 PM, though the shadow takes under two hours to get from Onslow to Palmerston North.

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. December is summer in Australia and New Zealand, so the Sun is high. In the Pilbara totality comes in the early morning with the Sun about 23° up in the east; over South Australia and Victoria the Sun is high, some 50 to 65° up, and over New Zealand about 68° up in the north-west. In Adelaide, Melbourne and Wellington, just outside the path, the glasses stay on throughout, however dark it seems.

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. If your spot is near an edge, as Tom Price, Port Broughton, Paraparaumu and Masterton are, check NASA's map before you travel, and go towards the red line for the full 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), 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), January 5, 2038 (Cuba, Haiti, the Windward Islands and West Africa) and July 2, 2038 (Colombia, Venezuela and the Sahara), and the hybrid eclipse of November 14, 2031 (the Pacific and Panama). The next one, the annular eclipse of June 21, 2039, crosses Alaska from Anchorage to Fairbanks, then Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.