Annular solar eclipse of June 21, 2039

The path of the ring

Alaska and the Mackenzie Delta, in the morning

Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic, in the evening

Times along the path

Local clock times on Tuesday, June 21, in the order the ring arrives. In June Alaska keeps daylight time, eight hours behind UTC; the Yukon keeps UTC−7 all year and the Mackenzie Delta Mountain daylight time, UTC−6. Norway and Sweden keep Central European summer time, UTC+2, and Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Russia's Moscow time and Belarus UTC+3: the ring reaches Anchorage at 8:22 AM and Bodø at 8:04 PM, less than two hours later by the shadow, and Umeå at 8:08 PM and Vaasa, across the Gulf of Bothnia, at 9:09 PM, almost the same moment.

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. This ring is thick: even at its middle about a tenth of the Sun still shines, enough to hurt the eyes.
• 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 Alaska the ring comes in the morning with the Sun in the east-northeast, about 11° up at Unalaska and 25° at Fairbanks. In northern Europe it comes in the evening with the Sun low in the west-northwest and north-west: about 16° up at Bodø, 12° at Umeå, 8° at Helsinki and 6° at Riga, and only 2° at Vitebsk, near the end, so choose a spot with a clear, low view that way, over the sea if you can.

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 Svolvær, Uppsala and Sachs Harbour are, check NASA's map before you travel, and go towards the red line for the longest 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), July 13, 2037 (Australia and New Zealand) and December 26, 2038 (South Australia, Victoria 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 total eclipse of December 15, 2039, crosses Antarctica from the Ross Ice Shelf to Davis Station on Prydz Bay: its path and times. After it, the total eclipse of April 30, 2041 crosses Luanda, the DR Congo, Kampala and Kenya: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.