Total solar eclipse of August 12, 2045

The path of totality

California to Oklahoma, in the morning

Arkansas to Florida and the Bahamas, around midday

Times along the path

Local clock times on Saturday, August 12, in the order totality arrives. California and Nevada keep Pacific Daylight Time, UTC−7; Utah and Colorado Mountain Daylight Time, UTC−6; Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle with Panama City Central Daylight Time, UTC−5; the rest of Florida Eastern Daylight Time, UTC−4, as do the Bahamas and Haiti; the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Guyana keep UTC−4 all year, and Suriname and north-east Brazil UTC−3. So totality reaches Redding at 9:16 AM, Oklahoma City at 11:51 AM, Orlando at 1:29 PM and Recife at 4:18 PM, though the shadow takes only about an hour and a quarter to get from California to Florida.

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 with the Sun well up: about 33° in the east over northern California in the morning, 59° over Oklahoma near noon and 76° almost overhead in Florida, so trees and buildings rarely hide it. In Denver, Wichita, Memphis, Birmingham and Jacksonville, just 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 Salt Lake City, Vernal, Tuscaloosa, Miami, Valdosta and Belém are, or just outside one, as Denver, Wichita and Norman are, check NASA's map before you travel, and go towards the red line for the longest 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), April 30, 2041 (Angola, Uganda and Kenya), April 20, 2042 (Sumatra, Borneo and the Philippines) and August 23, 2044 (Alberta, Montana and North Dakota), 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), October 25, 2041 (Shenyang, central Japan and Kiribati), October 14, 2042 (Thailand, Canberra and New Zealand) and February 16, 2045 (Wellington, Christchurch and Rarotonga), and the hybrid eclipse of November 14, 2031 (the Pacific and Panama). The next one, the annular eclipse of February 5, 2046, brings a ring of sunlight to New Guinea and Bougainville, then Maui and Hawaiʻi Island, and at sunset northern California, southern Oregon and Boise: its path and times. For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.