Total solar eclipse of April 20, 2042

The path of totality

Borneo, around 9 AM

The central Philippines, around 9:20 AM

Times along the path

Local clock times on Sunday, April 20, in the order totality arrives. Sumatra and West Kalimantan keep Indonesian western time, UTC+7; Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines keep UTC+8. So totality reaches Jambi at 7:46 AM and Kuching at 8:54 AM, though the shadow takes only about eight minutes to get from one to the other, and the Philippines a little after 9 AM.

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. Totality comes in the morning with the Sun in the east: about 25° up over Sumatra, 34° to 43° over Borneo and 49° to 58° over the Philippines. Over Sumatra the Sun is low enough for hills to hide it, so look for an open view to the east there; over Borneo and the Philippines it stands well clear. In Pontianak, Iloilo City and Manila, 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 Muara Bungo and Keningau 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), July 13, 2037 (Australia and New Zealand), December 26, 2038 (South Australia, Victoria and New Zealand), December 15, 2039 (Antarctica) and April 30, 2041 (Angola, Uganda 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, the Caribbean and West Africa), July 2, 2038 (Colombia, Venezuela and the Sahara), June 21, 2039 (Alaska, Scandinavia and the Baltic) and October 25, 2041 (Shenyang, central Japan and Kiribati), and the hybrid eclipse of November 14, 2031 (the Pacific and Panama). The next one, the annular eclipse of October 14, 2042, crosses southern Thailand, northern Malaysia, Borneo, Sulawesi, Timor, Australia from the Northern Territory to Canberra and the New South Wales coast, and New Zealand's South Island: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.