August 2, 2027
The longest totality in 123 years, over the temples of Ra.
On August 2, 2027, the Moon's shadow crosses the Strait of Gibraltar, sweeps over North Africa and the Nile Valley at Luxor, then races across the Red Sea past Jeddah and Mecca and out to the Indian Ocean — 6 minutes 23 seconds of totality at maximum, in Egypt's New Valley Governorate about 60 km southeast of Luxor, with the Sun standing 82° above the horizon at 1:02 p.m. local time.
The longest totality in decades, over ancient lands.
Where the shadow falls, the best spots to stand inside it, and how to be there — with us or on your own.
In the path: Morocco · Spain · Algeria · Libya · Egypt · Saudi Arabia · Yemen · Somalia. Total eclipse within the path; partial for hundreds of km beyond.
No events listed yet for this eclipse.
The specific good spots to stand inside the path.
Luxor is the epicenter: close to the centerline with over 6m20s of totality, an ~80% historical clear-sky probability, and direct sightlines from the monuments themselves. Aswan (~4–5 min) is a quieter alternative; Sohag (~6m20s) avoids Luxor's crowds. In Saudi Arabia, Jeddah gets ~5m57s and Mecca ~5m5s. Egypt has near-zero August cloud cover — dust, not cloud, is the chief concern.
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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center confirms this as the longest total solar eclipse on easily accessible land between 1991 and 2114 — a 123-year span. The last comparably long land-based totality was in 1991 (Mexico, almost seven minutes); the next is not until 2114. About half the path is over land, and 88.9 million people live within it across twelve nations — at least double the 44 million inside the April 2024 North American path. It belongs to Saros series 136, the same family that produced the 1919 relativity-proving eclipse.
Totality over the very monuments built to worship the Sun. With the Sun nearly overhead at Luxor there are no horizon obstructions and the corona stands crisp directly above Karnak, the Avenue of Sphinxes, the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut's Temple. The dry desert air responds fast — observers expect the temperature to 'drop like a stone' from midday highs around 43°C / 109°F.
Ancient Egypt was a solar civilization. The sun god Ra sailed his barque across the sky by day and through the underworld by night, where his eternal enemy, the giant serpent Apep (Apophis) — the embodiment of chaos — tried to devour him. Many Egyptians understood a solar eclipse as Apep momentarily swallowing Ra, until Ra's defenders cut the serpent open and freed the Sun, restoring cosmic order (ma'at). The symbolism of Ra being briefly devoured directly above the temples raised in his honor is extraordinary.
At 6m 23s of totality, the The Desert Eclipse sits 1st by duration among the 7 total solar eclipses in this series. Every eclipse in the series is its own experience — the numbers below are for context only.
Every total solar eclipse in the series, in date order. Each marker links to its page.
The Ra/Apep eclipse association is scholarly interpretation; ancient Egyptians left no confirmed explicit textual record of observing a specific solar eclipse. We present it as mythological framing, not documented history. By raw duration this is the second-longest eclipse of the 21st century (the 2009 eclipse was 6m39s but fell on remote, off-limits North Iwo Jima); among observable, accessible eclipses it is the longest for 123 years.