Hybrid solar eclipse of November 25, 2049

The path from the Red Sea to the Pacific

Saudi Arabia and Yemen, at sunrise

Southern Sumatra, around 1 PM

Southern Borneo and central Sulawesi, early afternoon

Times along the path

Local clock times on Thursday, November 25, in the order the shadow arrives. Saudi Arabia and Yemen keep UTC+3; the Maldives UTC+5; Sumatra and Central Kalimantan Western Indonesia Time, UTC+7; and South Kalimantan and Sulawesi Central Indonesia Time, UTC+8. So the ring reaches Al Lith at 6:49 AM, and totality Huvafen Fushi at 9:24 AM and Martapura at 1:03 PM, though the shadow takes under three and a half hours from the Red Sea to the Pacific. Places just outside the path, as Malé, Muara Enim, Kuala Kapuas, Barabai and Ampana are, see the Sun all but covered, which is still a partial eclipse: the sky stays light and the glasses stay on.

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.
• Only during totality, when the Moon covers the whole Sun, can the glasses come off, and this time totality lasts seconds: put them back on as soon as the first bright point of sunlight returns. Where the eclipse is a ring, over Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Halmahera, the Moon never covers the whole Sun, so the glasses stay on the whole time, during the ring too.
• 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 onto the ground with the Sun behind you.

This follows NASA's eclipse safety guidance. A Sun low on the horizon still needs the glasses: it can be bright even when it looks dim through haze. On Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast the ring comes minutes after sunrise, with the Sun about 3° up, low in the east-southeast, so the mountains inland, hills or buildings that way can hide it; in Wadi Hadhramaut the Sun is a little higher, about 13°. Over the Maldives totality comes in the middle of the morning with the Sun 45° up in the south-east, over Sumatra around 1 PM almost overhead, and over Borneo and Sulawesi in the early afternoon, 41° to 51° up in the west-southwest. Totality lasts seconds, so have the glasses in your hand to put back on, and the camera set up beforehand.

How these times are worked out

The path, its width and the greatest eclipse come from NASA's predictions by Fred Espenak (GSFC). NASA's table gives the edges every two minutes but leaves long gaps at both ends, over the Red Sea and Saudi Arabia at sunrise and over the Pacific at sunset; there the edges, and the path's two ends, are traced with Astronomy Engine, the same computation that gives each place its times. How long totality lasts follows NASA's table too: its duration on the centre line, shorter the farther a place lies from that line. Astronomy Engine's own figure runs 4 to 5 seconds longer on this eclipse, because it takes the Moon a little larger for totality than NASA does. Where the eclipse is a ring and where it is total follows the same table: the Moon's size against the Sun's reaches 1.000 over the Arabian Sea, west of the Maldives, and falls back to it east of Sulawesi, and between those two points the Moon covers the whole Sun. That computation 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, and on a band this narrow that matters: durations here are rounded down to 5 seconds, within about 10 km of an edge they read "up to", and over the Maldives and Sulawesi, where the whole band lies within a few kilometres of an edge, totality can come or not depending on those mountains. NASA usually posts predictions that include them 12 to 18 months before an eclipse, so check those before choosing a spot. With the Sun this low over Saudi Arabia, the air bends its light by about half a degree, so the times there can be a little off. If your spot is near an edge, as Thee Ain, ʽAsam, Huvafen Fushi, the Bungin Tambun villages and Martapura are, check NASA's map before you travel, and go towards the red line for the longest totality or 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), April 20, 2042 (Sumatra, Borneo and the Philippines), August 23, 2044 (Alberta, Montana and North Dakota), August 12, 2045 (California to Florida, the Caribbean and Brazil), August 2, 2046 (Brazil, Angola, Botswana, South Africa and Eswatini) and December 5, 2048 (Aysén, Chubut, Tristan da Cunha and Namibia), 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), February 16, 2045 (New Zealand and Rarotonga), February 5, 2046 (New Guinea, Hawaii, Oregon and Idaho), June 11, 2048 (Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Iceland, Oslo and Stockholm) and May 31, 2049 (Peru, Cape Verde, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon), and the earlier hybrid eclipse of November 14, 2031 (the Pacific and Panama). For every other eclipse, solar and lunar, see when the next eclipse is.