The 2027 Total Solar Eclipse over Egypt: What to Know
On 2 August 2027 the moon's shadow crosses Egypt, and for a little over six minutes the sun goes out above Luxor. It is the longest total eclipse visible from land until 2114. This article will let you move through that afternoon minute by minute, and along the shadow's path country by country, to see why this stretch of the Nile receives more of it than anywhere else on Earth.
Move the sun through the eclipse
Drag the slider to move through the eclipse hour as it will be seen from Luxor. The sky darkens as it will on the day, which is to say almost imperceptibly at first, then all at once.
Simulated for Luxor. Contact times after NASA and F. Espenak. Disc sizes are to scale; the sky and horizon are illustrative.
Two things in that sequence surprise people who have not witnessed an eclipse before. The first is how long nothing appears to happen. Egypt's sun is so strong that even a sun three quarters covered still feels like an ordinary afternoon. The second is how fast the last part goes.
The final minute before totality is the one everybody remembers.
Where the shadow lingers longest
Totality is not the same length everywhere along an eclipse track. The shadow is an ellipse racing across a curved planet, and it slows and widens as it approaches the point where the sun is most nearly overhead. Move west to east along the 2027 path and watch the number climb.
Durations are approximate and rounded, after published eclipse data. Horizontal spacing is illustrative rather than geographic.
The maximum, 6 minutes and 23 seconds, falls in the Western Desert southeast of Luxor. Luxor itself receives about 6 minutes and 22 seconds.
Six minutes is a very long time
Most people who have seen a total eclipse have seen it for two or three minutes. 2027 Egypt's eclipse is an generational outlier.
Maximum duration of totality at the point of greatest eclipse, rounded to the nearest second.
The reason is a coincidence of distances. The moon reaches its closest point to Earth within hours of the eclipse, so its disc appears at its largest, while Earth sits near its farthest point from the sun, so the sun appears slightly smaller. A large moon covering a small sun casts a wider, slower shadow. No longer eclipse will happen on land again until 2114.
We will be on the Nile to watch it. A single dahabiya, a small wooden sailing boat, twenty guests, on open river on the centreline between Luxor and Aswan, with an unobstructed horizon in every direction and none of the crowd that will gather on the banks.