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The Oceania Eclipse

July 22, 2028

The black Sun over Sydney Harbour, for the first time since 1857.

On July 22, 2028, the Moon's umbra crosses the Indian Ocean and Christmas Island, makes landfall on the Kimberley coast just before midday, sweeps southeast across the outback and directly over the entire Greater Sydney area, then crosses the Tasman Sea to Queenstown and Dunedin in New Zealand. Maximum totality is 5 minutes 10 seconds in the Kimberley; over Sydney it is 3 minutes 49 seconds, with the Sun 29° above the horizon at about 2:01 p.m. AEST.

Eclipse Essentials
Max Duration
5m 10s
Path Width
~205 km
Sun Altitude
~65°
Magnitude
1.056

Totality sweeps across the sunburnt country.

Time Until Totality
700
Days
09
Hrs
21
Min
29
Sec

Where to be & how to join

Where the shadow falls, the best spots to stand inside it, and how to be there — with us or on your own.

path · event · viewing spot

In the path: Australia · New Zealand. Total eclipse within the path; partial for hundreds of km beyond.

Events for this eclipse

No events listed yet for this eclipse.

Best places to watch

The specific good spots to stand inside the path.

  • Sydney, AustraliaAustralia's largest city lies near the southern edge of the path.
  • Broken Hill, AustraliaOutback Australia for remote, dark-sky viewing.
  • Dunedin, New ZealandSouthern New Zealand catches the final moments of totality.

For maximum duration and near-guaranteed clear skies: the remote Kimberley, the Northern Territory's red centre, and outback Queensland. For spectacle and atmosphere, Sydney is unbeatable — but NSW and New Zealand carry meaningful cloud risk in mid-winter.

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The trip we've built around this eclipse — join the EclipseSeekers on the ground.

IM-XP Australasia Eclipse

Details coming soon. Join us for our Australasian eclipse experience.

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Why this eclipse is special

This is Sydney's first total solar eclipse since March 26, 1857 — 171 years — and its last until June 3, 2858. A total eclipse over a major Australian city is extraordinarily rare: any single point on Earth averages one total eclipse only every 375 years, which is precisely why Sydney has waited so long. It is the second of five Australian total eclipses spanning 2023–2038, and its path crosses three future eclipse tracks (2030, 2037, 2038).

Totality and the landscape

Two completely different eclipses in one path. Over the outback, the black Sun hangs in a deep blue desert sky above red earth and landmarks like the Devils Marbles, with a 360° sunset wrapping a flat horizon. Over Sydney it becomes one of the rarest sights in all of eclipse-chasing: totality over a major global city's skyline, with the Royal Botanic Garden sitting squarely in the path — the eclipsed Sun framed above the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

Mythology & meaning

Aboriginal Australian cultures carry some of the world's oldest continuous astronomical traditions. In most, the Sun is a woman and the Moon is a man. Several cultures independently grasped that an eclipse is a conjunction of Sun and Moon — an extraordinary intellectual feat given totality recurs at any one spot only every few centuries. The Warlpiri explain a solar eclipse as the Sun-woman being hidden by the Moon-man as they make love; the Yolŋu of Arnhem Land say the Sun-woman Walu is briefly caught by the Moon-man Ngalindi; the Euahlayi of New South Wales tell of the Sun-woman Yhi pursuing the reluctant Moon-man Bahloo. Rock engravings at Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park near Sydney may depict an eclipse.

How this eclipse compares

At 5m 10s of totality, the The Oceania Eclipse sits 2nd 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.

This eclipse
5m 10s
Series shortest
2m 18s
Series median
3m 44s
Series longest
6m 23s

Totality timeline

Every total solar eclipse in the series, in date order. Each marker links to its page.

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