Moon calendar · eclipses
The solar eclipse of July 22, 2028 night in broad daylight over Sydney.
On July 22, 2028, the Moon’s shadow crosses Australia diagonally, from the Kimberley in the north-west to Sydney in the south-east, before touching the South Island of New Zealand: a total solar eclipse offering up to more than five minutes of night in broad daylight. The global peak falls around 2:55 UTC, i.e. 4:55 in Paris: nothing is visible from Western Europe. The new Moon stands at the very last degree of Cancer.
The essentials
- Date
- July 22, 2028
- Type
- total solar, up to more than 5 minutes of totality
- Peak
- around 2:55 UTC, i.e. 4:55 in Paris
- Totality visible from
- Australia (from the Kimberley to Sydney) and the South Island of New Zealand
- Partial visible from
- South-East Asia, Indonesia, all of Australia, New Zealand; not from Western Europe
- Sign occupied
- Sun and Moon at 30° of Cancer, at the threshold of Leo
What happens that day?
The Moon’s shadow reaches Earth in the Indian Ocean, touches Australia along the wild Kimberley coast, then crosses the whole continent diagonally: the Northern Territory, western Queensland, inland New South Wales, and finally Sydney, where night will fall in the middle of an austral winter afternoon. 1857 is often cited as the last totality over the city: nearly two centuries of waiting.
Totality peaks at more than five minutes in north-west Australia, a generous duration for a total eclipse. After Australia, the shadow crosses the Tasman Sea and offers the South Island of New Zealand an end-of-day totality, the Sun low on the winter horizon.
Where and how to watch it?
This is a rendezvous at the antipodes: from Western Europe, absolutely nothing will be visible, the phenomenon playing out in the dead of the European night. To live it, you’ll have to travel: the Kimberley and central Australia promise the longest minutes and the most reliable dry-winter skies; Sydney offers the rare experience of a totality over a metropolis; the South Island of New Zealand, images of grazing totality over the Southern Alps.
On the spot, the usual rules: certified ISO 12312-2 glasses during all the partial phases, never the naked eye or sunglasses facing the bitten Sun. Only the minutes of totality, when the disc is fully covered and the corona appears, can be taken in without a filter; at the first ray that returns, the glasses go back on.
What astrology reads into it
This eclipsed new Moon stands at 30° of Cancer, the very last degree of the sign: a few hours later, the Sun enters Leo. Tradition gives final degrees a quality of threshold: something ends in the very substance of what is beginning. On the Cancer-Capricorn axis of the 2028 eclipses, this one leans on the Cancer side: home, roots, what we protect.
A total eclipse is a new Moon underlined three times: an emphatic beginning, which astrology reads as a mood lasting several months rather than as a dated event. The question of the season might be put this way: what, in what you call “home”, is ready to change shape so it can keep carrying you?
And the next one?
The last eclipse of the stretch is also the gentlest for the sky of Western Europe: on December 31, 2028, a total lunar eclipse will rise with New Year’s Eve, a red Moon above the north-east horizon. More than an hour of totality, to watch with the naked eye between two glasses raised to the new year.
Frequently asked questions
- Will the July 22, 2028 eclipse be visible from Europe?
- No, not at all: at the peak it’s about 4:55 in the morning in Paris and the phenomenon unfolds on the other side of the world, over Australia and New Zealand. Only live streams will let you follow it from Western Europe.
- Will Sydney really see the totality?
- Yes: the band of totality crosses the city in the middle of an austral winter afternoon, a configuration Sydney hadn’t known since 1857. The event promises to be one of the most-watched of the decade in the Southern Hemisphere.