Annular solar eclipse of October 25, 2041

The path of the ring

North-east China and North Korea, around 8 AM

Central Japan, a little after 9 AM

Times along the path

Local clock times on Friday, October 25, in the order the ring arrives. Mongolia and China keep UTC+8, North Korea and Japan UTC+9, the Marshall Islands and Tarawa UTC+12 and the Phoenix Islands UTC+13: the ring reaches Shenyang at 7:53 AM, Nagoya at 9:05 AM, Tarawa at 2:17 PM and Kanton at 3:57 PM, though the shadow takes about three hours from Shenyang to Kanton.

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 more than 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 Mongolia the ring comes just after sunrise, with the Sun only 3° up at Ulaanbaatar, so a clear view to the east-southeast matters; over north-east China and North Korea the Sun is some 15 to 20° up in the south-east, and over central Japan about 30°. On Tarawa it comes in the afternoon with the Sun about 55° up in the west-southwest.

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 Fuxin, Nara, Kofu and Beru 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), December 26, 2038 (South Australia, Victoria and New Zealand), December 15, 2039 (Antarctica) and April 30, 2041 (Luanda, the DR Congo, Kampala and Kenya), 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 total eclipse of April 20, 2042, crosses Sumatra, Sarawak with Kuching and Miri, Brunei and Sabah, then Palawan, Boracay and Bicol in the Philippines: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.