The UAE will not see a total solar eclipse until September 2081, 55 years from now

Dubai: Today's total solar eclipse sweeps across northern Russia, Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain. It does not come anywhere near the Emirates.

The next total solar eclipse visible from the UAE falls on 3 September 2081. Fifty-five years from now. Most people reading this will not see one from this country.

Today's eclipse: what can we see?

Nothing.

Ibrahim Al Jarwan, chairman of the Emirates Astronomical Society and a member of the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Sciences, confirmed to Al Khaleej that the eclipse is not visible from the UAE at all, since the country sits outside the viewing path.

The same applies across most of the Gulf, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.

Even the partial phases stop short. Algeria gets the best regional view at up to 96 per cent coverage, Morocco reaches 88 per cent, Tunisia around 50 per cent. The Moon's shadow simply does not extend far enough east.

For the record, the eclipse begins globally at 19:32 UAE time, with totality running from 20:56 to 22:42 and the event finishing at 23:57.

What the UAE has actually seen

Two events in recent memory, with one of them remarkable.

October 2022: the last one

The most recent solar eclipse visible from the Emirates was a partial on 25 October 2022.

It covered around 39 per cent of the Sun's disc and lasted more than two hours, running from 2.41pm to 4.54pm and peaking at 3.51pm.

About 150 people gathered at Al Thuraya Astronomy Centre in Dubai, where Hasan Al Hariri, chief executive of Dubai Astronomy Group, gave a talk on safe viewing before the event and the whole thing was livestreamed.

Special glasses were handed out, and one telescope was fitted with a filter to project the eclipse onto a paper screen. "This made it possible to combine a photo opportunity and observation in one event," Al Hariri said.

The same eclipse was watched across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and western Asia, from Lahore to Tyre to Baghdad.

December 2019: the ring of fire

The one worth remembering happened three years earlier, and it was the first of its kind here in 172 years.

On 26 December 2019, an annular solar eclipse crossed the UAE. Annular rather than total, meaning the Moon sat too far from Earth to cover the Sun completely, leaving a bright ring around the edge.

The previous one was in 1847.

Full annularity was visible only from the Gharbia and Liwa region of Abu Dhabi, with everywhere else seeing a partial eclipse of varying depth. At maximum, 91.93 per cent of the Sun's face was covered, and the ring itself lasted two minutes and 47 seconds.

The UAE Space Agency and Dubai Astronomy Group ran three viewing sites: Al Thuraya Astronomy Centre in Mushrif Park, Madinat Zayed Park in Abu Dhabi, and the observation deck at Burj Khalifa. Gulf News photographers covered it from both Dubai and Liwa.

Al Hariri spent the run-up warning people about their eyesight rather than selling the spectacle. "The sun emits intensive light, which is too bright for our eyes," he said. "If we look at it without protection, our eyesight will be damaged."

The next partial eclipses visible to us

The next solar eclipse of any kind visible from the UAE is a partial on 2 August 2027.

That one is a total eclipse elsewhere, with the path of totality crossing Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt before moving over the Red Sea into Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where parts of the kingdom will see close to six minutes of darkness.

From here it is a partial, but a substantial one. Dubai Astronomy Group puts coverage at around 53 per cent in Dubai, with the emirates ranging between 50 and 57 per cent. Just over half the Sun, obscured in the afternoon.

After that comes another partial on 1 June 2030.

Then the wait begins in earnest.

Why the UAE misses so many

It is geography and arithmetic the reason why.

The Moon's shadow during a total eclipse is narrow, typically a corridor a few hundred kilometres wide, and it traces a path across roughly one half of one per cent of Earth's surface each time. Any given location waits an average of around 375 years between total eclipses according to NASA.

The UAE is a small country. A larger landmass catches more shadows simply by covering more ground. This one has to wait for a corridor to pass directly overhead, and the odds of that are slim in any given century.

Today's eclipse is a reminder of how narrow that corridor is. It crosses Greenland, Iceland and a corner of Spain, and misses everything in between.

Worth diarising anyway

2 August 2027: partial solar eclipse, visible from the UAE 1 June 2030: partial solar eclipse, visible from the UAE 3 September 2081: total solar eclipse, visible from the UAE

There is also plenty of lunar activity in between, which the Emirates does get reliably. A penumbral lunar eclipse falls on 28 August this year, with a partial lunar eclipse on 20 February 2027 and a total lunar eclipse on 31 December 2028.

Lunar eclipses are visible from an entire hemisphere at once, which is why they turn up so much more often. No special glasses required either.