Annular solar eclipse of October 14, 2042

The path of the ring

Southern Thailand and northern Malaysia, after 7 AM

New South Wales and Canberra, around 1:45 PM

The South Island, around 4:25 PM

Times along the path

Local clock times on Tuesday, October 14, in the order the ring arrives. The Nicobar Islands keep India's time, UTC+5:30; Thailand and West Kalimantan keep UTC+7; Malaysia, central Indonesia and Western Australia UTC+8; Timor-Leste UTC+9; the Northern Territory UTC+9:30 and Queensland UTC+10; New South Wales and Canberra are on daylight saving time, UTC+11, and New Zealand on daylight time, UTC+13. So the ring reaches Hat Yai at 7:07 AM, Tennant Creek at 11:08 AM, Canberra at 1:42 PM and Christchurch at 4:28 PM, though the shadow takes under three and a half hours to get from Thailand to New Zealand.

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 seventh 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. Over southern Thailand and northern Malaysia the ring comes soon after sunrise, with the Sun only 13 to 18° up in the east, so a clear view low to the east matters; over Australia it comes around midday with the Sun high, about 72° up at Birdsville and 60° at Canberra; over New Zealand it comes in the late afternoon with the Sun about 37° up in the north-west.

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 Bontang, Bathurst, Cooma and Queenstown 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), April 30, 2041 (Angola, Uganda and Kenya) and April 20, 2042 (Sumatra, Borneo and the Philippines), 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 total eclipse of August 23, 2044, crosses the Canadian Arctic, the Northwest Territories and Alberta with Edmonton and Calgary on the evening of August 22, local time, and ends at sunset over northern Montana and North Dakota: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.