Eclipse Finder · 2026–2050
Every solar and lunar eclipse, from where you actually stand
There are 110 solar and lunar eclipses between now and 2050. Tell this page where you are and it will work out, one by one, which of them you can see — and what they will really look like.
When is the next eclipse where you are?
Eclipse calendar: every upcoming solar and lunar eclipse
The kinds of eclipse, and what each one actually looks like
Four kinds of solar eclipse and three of lunar. They are not degrees of the same thing — the difference between them is where you are standing in the moon's shadow, or how deep the moon has gone into Earth's. Each one below opens as a full-size portrait from the eclipse types link above the list.
Solar eclipses
Four kinds, and they are not variations on each other
Total solar eclipse
The only one that goes dark.
The moon covers the sun completely. The corona appears, bright planets come out, the horizon glows sunset-orange in every direction at once, and the temperature drops several degrees in a couple of minutes. Totality is the only moment in any eclipse when it is safe to look with bare eyes — and it ends without warning, so the filter goes back on the instant the first bead of sun returns.
Frequency26.7%Longest7m 29sBare eyesIn totality
Annular solar eclipse
A ring of fire, in full daylight.
The moon is near the far end of its orbit and looks slightly too small to cover the sun, so a complete ring of photosphere is left burning around it. Through a filter it is one of the strangest things in the sky. Without one you would barely notice: even at 99% coverage the remaining ring is direct photosphere, so the light stays bright, shadows stay sharp and it never gets dark.
Frequency33.2%Longest12m 23sBare eyesNever
Partial solar eclipse
The common one, and the quiet one.
You are off to the side of the track, inside the outer shadow only, and the moon never covers the whole sun. Below about 70% you would not know it was happening. The best way to watch is to stop looking up: the dappled shade under a leafy tree turns every gap into a pinhole camera, and the ground fills with crescent suns.
Frequency35.3%TrackNoneBare eyesNever
Hybrid solar eclipse
The rare one that changes its mind.
The moon's apparent size almost exactly matches the sun's, so the planet's own curvature decides the outcome. Near the ends of the track the ground sits farther from the shadow's tip and the eclipse is annular; in the middle Earth curves up to meet the tip and the same eclipse turns total. Watch for Baily's beads — sunlight streaming through lunar valleys along a hairline rim.
Frequency4.8%In the canon569One trackBoth
Lunar eclipses
Three kinds, and only one of them is worth driving for
Total lunar eclipse
The blood moon — and the darkest sky of the month.
The whole moon sits inside Earth's umbra. It does not go black: it turns copper-red, lit by sunlight bent through the ring of every sunrise and sunset on Earth at once. How red depends on how much dust and cloud that ring is holding, which is why no two look alike. And because the moon stops lighting the sky, a genuinely dark site gets its Milky Way back for the length of totality.
Bare eyesAlwaysTotality1h 42mDark siteMilky Way
Partial lunar eclipse
An obvious bite, with a hard edge.
Part of the moon crosses into the umbra and the rest stays in full sun. The shadow's edge is curved and unmistakable, and it is the curve of Earth — the observation that told the Greeks the planet was a sphere, centuries before anyone left the ground. The shadowed side often glows a dull red near the boundary.
Bare eyesAlwaysFilterNoneThat edgeEarth's curve
Penumbral lunar eclipse
The one that disappoints people.
The moon clips only the outer shadow, where Earth blocks part of the sun rather than all of it, so the moon is still fully lit — just by a slightly smaller sun. The result is a faint grey shading across one limb. Below about 0.7 penumbral magnitude you would not notice unless someone told you, and even above that it takes a careful eye and a memory of what the moon looked like an hour before. The portrait here is honest: that really is most of the effect.
Bare eyesAlwaysUmbraNo contactUsuallyUnnoticeable
Frequencies counted from the Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses — 11,898 solar eclipses between 2000 BCE and 3000 CE. Durations are that catalogue's own extremes.
Key takeaways
- A percentage is not a plan. The gap between a 99% partial eclipse and a total one is not one percent — it is the entire experience. Nothing worth seeing happens until the last sliver goes.
- Height matters as much as coverage. An 80% eclipse with the sun four degrees off the horizon is a very different afternoon than 80% overhead. This page tells you both.
- Annular eclipses never get dark. The ring of fire is spectacular through a filter and completely unremarkable to your skin and eyes. It stays daylight the whole way through.
- Lunar eclipses are the ones a dark sky transforms. When the moon slides fully into shadow it stops washing out the sky, and at a genuinely dark site the Milky Way comes back for roughly an hour.
- North America waits a long time for the sun. After the run of the 2020s, the next total solar eclipse to cross the contiguous United States is in 2045. The lunar ones, meanwhile, keep coming.
What the percentage actually means
Obscuration is the share of the sun's area the moon covers at maximum. It is the number everyone quotes, and it is wildly misleading, because your eye does not respond to light in a straight line. The sun is roughly 400,000 times brighter than the full moon. Take away 90% of it and you still have something 40,000 times brighter than a full moon sitting in the sky.
Here is the honest translation, from someone who has stood under several of these:
- Under 40%You would never know. Without a filter there is no visible change. The light is the same, the shadows are the same, birds carry on.
- 40–70%Still nothing, honestly. This is where pinhole projection earns its keep — look at the dappled shade under a leafy tree and every gap becomes a tiny crescent sun.
- 70–90%Something is off. The light goes slightly flat and metallic, like a very high thin cloud you cannot find. Shadows get unusually crisp because the sun has become a sliver rather than a disc.
- 90–99%Genuinely strange. The temperature drops a few degrees, colors desaturate, and the quality of the light stops resembling anything weather does. Venus often appears. It is still bright daylight.
- 99–99.9%Eerie — and not totality. This is the cruel band. It looks like a wrong, dim, silver version of the world, and the corona stays invisible the entire time. People who drive to 99% and stop have missed it.
- 100%The only one that counts. The last bead goes, the corona snaps out, planets appear, the horizon turns sunset-orange in every direction at once, and the temperature falls off a cliff. It is not a better version of 99%. It is a different event.
Annular eclipses are the exception that proves the rule: even at 99% coverage the remaining ring is still direct photosphere, so the sky stays blue and the ground stays lit. Never look at one without a proper solar filter, at any stage.
The eclipse worth planning your darkness around
Solar eclipses get the attention, and fairly — totality is the best two minutes in nature. But solar eclipses are indifferent to light pollution. You can watch one from a parking garage in a city center and see exactly what someone sees from the desert.
A total lunar eclipse is the opposite, and it is the one this site cares about. On any ordinary full moon night the sky is effectively ruined: a full moon puts up enough skyglow to erase the Milky Way even from a Bortle 2 site. During a total lunar eclipse that light switches off. For the length of totality — sometimes well over an hour — you get a genuinely dark sky with a copper-red moon hanging in the middle of it, and if you are somewhere dark enough, the summer or winter Milky Way climbs back out of the murk while you watch.
It is the only night of the year when a full moon and a dark sky are the same night. Which means the honest advice for a total lunar eclipse is not "find a clear view" — it is "get somewhere dark, and bring binoculars for everything that is not the moon."
Penumbral eclipses, for what it is worth, are close to a non-event. The moon passes through Earth's outer shadow and dims very slightly on one edge. If the penumbral magnitude is below about 0.7 you would not notice unless someone told you, and even above that it takes a careful eye.
Now find the dark part
Knowing when the shadow arrives is half of it. The other half is standing somewhere the sky is worth looking at when it does — and for a total lunar eclipse, that is the whole thing. Find out how dark it actually gets where you live, and where the nearest genuinely dark sky is.
Find dark skies near you