SOUTHERN Spain will host Europe’s only total solar eclipse next year when the moon’s shadow will plunge the region’s summer morning into darkness.
The news may come as a shock that another total eclipse follows less than a year after yesterday’s – when the previous eclipse before that took place over a century ago.
But grand celestial coincidence as it is, the next one will cross the Strait of Gibraltar and cover prime expat territories across Gibraltar, the Costa del Sol and Andalucia at around 10.45am on August 2.
While yesterday’s historic eclipse crossed northern and central Spain, the 2027 spectacle will be an exclusive event for the southern coast and North Africa.
Better still, the moon will block out the sun for over four minutes in parts of Andalucia, making it significantly longer than this year’s, which lasted just 64 seconds in some regions.
The totality will be visible across major cities including Malaga, Cadiz, Sevilla, Granada and Almeria, as well as the African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
Gibraltar is positioned directly in the path of totality and will experience an astonishing four minutes and 32 seconds of complete daytime darkness.
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But parts of North Africa will be even more spoilt – the totality’s maximum point will plunge the region into daytime darkness for over six minutes.
Because the eclipse occurs during a mid-summer morning, the sun will be high in the sky and provide ideal viewing conditions with minimal obstruction.
The partial phase of the eclipse will begin at 9.30am across the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearics.
The totality cone will then sweep across the southern tip of the country between 10.46am and 10.53am.
Following its path over Spain, the shadow will continue along the North African coastline into Egypt, the Red Sea and Saudi Arabia, before ending in the Indian Ocean at 2.43pm.
Astronomers have noted that southern Spain will be the only place in Europe to witness the total phase of the event.
Data from the Spanish National Geographic Institute confirms that the rest of the country will still see a partial eclipse with at least 70% obscuration.
But it doesn’t even end there.
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The 2027 spectacle is just the second event in a historic ‘Eclipse Trio’ for Spain, which will see another one in 2028, this time on January 26, with an annular solar eclipse.
An annular eclipse occurs when the moon is too far from Earth to completely block the sun, leaving a glowing ‘ring of fire’ visible around its edges.
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