Australia’s the place to be for ‘unbelievable string of four total eclipses’, expert says

All eyes were on the sky this week as a once-in-a-generation total eclipse was visible across parts of Europe, the UK and Russia, Greenland and Iceland.

But for those with FOMO about the Northern Hemisphere’s celestial event, Australia will soon have its turn and experts say it will be worth the wait.

Dr Ryan French, a solar astrophysicist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Colorado and co-author of Little Book of Eclipses, said we have two more years to wait for kick-off that will be the first of a flurry of solar eclipses.

“Australia is getting a kind of unbelievable string of four total eclipses in 10 years starting in 2028, all passing through major cities,” he told CNN.

It will be on July 22, 2028 when the Great Australasian Eclipse, as it’s being called, will see the moon completely obstruct the sun (a total eclipse) in the Kimberley, northern WA about 11am local time.

The path will also include south-western Queensland, rural NSW - near towns such as Bourke, Dubbo, Mudgee, Orange - and then directly over Sydney for about four minutes at 2pm AEST.

NASA’s eclipse forecaster Fred Espenak says the 2028 total eclipse will be the first Sydney’s seen since March 1857 and a sight that won’t be seen again for a few centuries, with the next one predicted for 2858.

In New Zealand, Queenstown, Dunedin and Ranfurly will also get a good view of the total eclipse according to the models.

Meanwhile Melbourne, Wellington and Auckland will all be treated to a partial eclipse, which is when only some of the sun’s light is blocked and it appears more like a crescent.

But that’s not the last of it, with more forecast over the following nine years.

Australians in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane will also get a partial glimpse of the November 25, 2030 eclipse, which will be more prominent over parts of Africa, including Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho.

Then back-to-back in 2037 and 2038, Australia and New Zealand will be the place to witness total eclipses.

On July 13, 2037, it will be a magical and very rare total eclipse over Uluru, which will have one of the longest totalities, with skies going dark for 3.10 minutes.

Parts of the Northern Territory and Queensland - Curtin Springs, Charleville, Roma, Dalby and Toowoomba - will also experience a total eclipse for more than three minutes.

Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Tweed Heads, Byron Bay, Lord Howe Island will all be in the path of totality, while Perth, Darwin, Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne should all see a partial eclipse.

While in New Zealand, the total eclipse will be visible in Te Awamutu, Taupō, Tongariro National Park (the home of Ngauruhoe volcano, which was used as Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings movies) and Napier, with partial eclipses in Wellington and Auckland.

And Boxing Day - December 26 - 2038 will look a little different for some Victorians with the total eclipse visible from Echuca and Shepparton, as well as Whyalla in South Australia.

Sydney and Melbourne will witness partial eclipses.

In New Zealand, the best viewing sites will be Paraparaumu and Palmerston North, while Wellington and Auckland will again see partial eclipses.

French, who was able to witness Wednesday’s eclipse from Spain while celebrating his birthday, championed the idea of booking in advance - especially for accommodation.

“Eclipse paths are relatively narrow, so it tends to be hotels and accommodations that book out and get really expensive way sooner than the flights do,” French advised.

Don’t want to wait?

If 2028 is too long to wait, French says the total solar eclipse coming up next year, on August 2, 2027, is “the one to be at because it will actually be the longest eclipse in the remainder of our lifetimes”.

Totality, or when the moon’s shadow completely blocks the sun’s face from view, will last up to more than six minutes.

The path of totality will cross southern Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen, according to the National Solar Observatory.

The eclipse will pass directly over the Valley of the Kings in Luxor and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, as well as Mecca in Saudi Arabia, French said.

“Crucially, the weather in August all the way along the eclipse path is pretty much guaranteed to be sunny because a lot of it is desert,” French added.

Meanwhile, a partial eclipse will be visible from most of Europe, much of Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, as well as eastern Canada and northern Maine in North America, according to NASA.

- Reported with CNN.