If you want to witness a total solar eclipse and you live in Europe, you’re out of luck until at least 2026. Unless you live in one of a few of Europe’s geographical extremities (i.e. the Faeroe Islands, Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, Abkhazia and other parts of eastern Georgia or the southern part of Russia), the astronomical phenomenon will pass you by.
North Americans are in a bit more luck: on August 21, 2017, a solar eclipse will culminate in the sky close to Memphis, Tennessee. And on April 8, 2024, an eclipse will be visible in a band stretching from Maine to Mexico.
South America will have three solar eclipses. On July 11, 2010 and again on July 2, 2019, eclipses will be visible across two different bands of Chile and Argentina. The third one will culminate over Patagonia on December 14, 2020. Oh, and there is a small strip of Brazil that witnessed the very beginning of an eclipse culminating faraway over the Libyan-Chadian border on March 29, 2006.
Apart from that previous one, Africa witnessed two more eclipses, both over the southern part of the
continent, in 2001 and 2002. But none until at least 2026.
Small areas in Australia’s Northern Territory and the state of Queensland will observe an
eclipse on November 13, 2012.
In Asia, bands of darkness will travel across Indonesia on March 9, 2016, China, India, Eastern Nepal, Northern Bangladesh and the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on July 2009 and China, Mongolia, the eastern tip of Kazakhstan and Siberia on August 8, 2008. That last one will culminate near the lands where the aboriginal Nenets tribe live. If you’re their shaman, you might want to note that date in your diary, and prepare a good speech.
Total solar eclipses occur when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, obscuring the sunlight and leaving visible only a much fainter corona. This ´totality´is only ever visible in a narrow bands of the Earth´s surface, as this map demonstrates. Interestingly, the shape of those bands bends with their relative position on the map – from slight curves close to the equator to almost circular nearer the pole.
Don´t think that the Sun (and Moon) behave differently over different
parts of the globe:
it´s the globe that gets distorted when it gets stretched out over a
flat map surface, especially over the polar areas. (Source)
This world map of solar eclipses from 2001 to 2025 originates here at the NASA website.
Also see my poster Solar Eclipse!
© Copyright 2010 Michael Paukner. All Rights Reserved.
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onesevenone, Alan (merrionsq), LuthienBeren, MoMoPictures, and 130 other people added this photo to their favorites.
Ulises Omar Zúñiga 39 months ago | reply
Beautiful Michael... can i print this for my room?
Alan (merrionsq) 39 months ago | reply
Excellent! I tried China in 2009 but was rained out, so this is a good way of visualising possible trips in the next 15 years...
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Seen on your photo stream. (?)
simoncpage 39 months ago | reply
Saw the original one before here:
strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/158-total-solar-ecli...
Yours is so much better.
Claudio © 39 months ago | reply
great job
egophony 39 months ago | reply
Why leave out the Antarctic eclipse?
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap031208.html
Michæl Paukner 39 months ago | reply
thanks everybody! ;)
@egophony: waited for that question! ;) I left away the antarctica for artistic reasons. 1. it didn't fit on the poster / besides all information this is still an art project. + 2. i'm not a fan of the stretched depiction of the Antartctica on the Mercator projection. (this standard map projection distorts the size and shape of large objects, as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles, where it becomes infinite.)
Zowis Camera 39 months ago | reply
are any of you prints available on t shirt. i would buy the bunch
egophony 39 months ago | reply
@Michæl Paukner - Ooo. Now that you mention it, would this look cool in other projections, like that orthographic one? Thanks for the explanation!
Boris SV 39 months ago | reply
excellent job. thank you so much!
uncle sam2005 33 months ago | reply
I love it, so concise.
Solar Orlando
ixycreativity 19 months ago | reply
so clear! great.
cpyke 3 months ago | reply
You scared me for a second. I've been looking forward to the 2017 one in the US because it is almost right over me (Washington). Luckily it is August so there's a pretty good chance it will be on one of our 58 clear days that year.