Total solar eclipse of April 30, 2041

The path of totality

Luanda and northern Angola, around 1 PM

Uganda and western Kenya, around 4 PM

Times along the path

Local clock times on Tuesday, April 30, in the order totality arrives. Angola and the west of the DR Congo keep West Africa Time, UTC+1; the east of the DR Congo keeps UTC+2; Uganda, Kenya and Somalia keep East Africa Time, UTC+3. So totality reaches Luanda at 12:54 PM, Bulungu at 1:16 PM, Lubero at 2:48 PM and Kampala at 3:56 PM, though the shadow takes about an hour to get from Luanda to Kampala.

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. Over Angola totality comes around 1 PM with the Sun high, about 63° up in the north-northwest; over Uganda and Kenya it comes in the late afternoon with the Sun some 35 to 45° up in the west-northwest. In Entebbe, Kisumu and Nairobi, 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. The path is narrow: if your spot is near an edge, as Kampala, Jinja, Butembo and Uíge are, check NASA's map before you travel, and go towards the red line for the full totality. From Kampala that means north, towards Wakiso.

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), December 26, 2038 (South Australia, Victoria and New Zealand) and December 15, 2039 (Antarctica), 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), July 2, 2038 (Colombia, Venezuela and the Sahara) and June 21, 2039 (Alaska, Scandinavia and the Baltic), and the hybrid eclipse of November 14, 2031 (the Pacific and Panama). The next one, the annular eclipse of October 25, 2041, crosses north-east China with Shenyang, the north of North Korea and central Japan from Kyoto to Nagoya: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.