The engine

Most eclipse content on the internet is one of two things: a reference table someone copied, or a sales page for a tour. This site is built on a third thing — a computation engine we run ourselves.

It takes NASA GSFC's published Besselian elements — the compact mathematical description of an eclipse's geometry — and derives the local circumstances for any point on Earth: how long totality lasts there, the second it begins and ends, how high the Sun stands and in which direction. The math is the standard fundamental-plane reduction from the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac; nothing exotic, just done properly and checked.

Checked, meaning checked

Before any computed figure ships, it is validated against every independently published value we can find — timeanddate.com local circumstances and published path tables. Across the 2027, 2026 and 2028 eclipses that is thirteen anchor cities so far, with agreement within ±4.5 seconds everywhere — Sydney and Melilla to the exact second. The full validation table lives on /methodology.

The checking has already earned its keep twice: it caught a published Cádiz duration that was 7 seconds short, and it caught two cities (Aden, Berbera) that path lists placed inside totality when the umbra actually misses them.

Why it matters to you

• Any point, not just listed cities. Reference sites answer for the places in their database. An engine answers for the beach you're actually standing on — that's how the southern Spain guide can rank twelve positions along one coast.
• Any eclipse, not just one. The same code produced the 2026, 2027 and 2028 figures, and will produce every future one in the catalogue as it comes into planning range.
• No sales pressure on the numbers. We sell no tours, so a duration never needs to flatter a destination. Where a figure can't be computed or sourced, the site shows a dash and says why.

The full methodology & validation table · Every upcoming eclipse