22 July 2028: Sydney’s first total eclipse in 171 years

On the morning of 26 March 1857, about 200 people gathered in the grounds of the Macquarie Lighthouse on South Head. Sydney was about to see its first total eclipse since the colony was founded in 1788. The Government Astronomer, the Reverend William Scott, had set up a small telescope borrowed from the Governor-General.

Across the harbour, the geologist W. B. Clarke watched from high ground in what is now North Sydney, with a telescope and a barometer. In Windsor, about 46 km to the north-west, a young amateur astronomer named John Tebbutt waited at home. He had calculated that the shadow would pass almost straight over his house.

Cloud ruined the view. Apart from one clear spell of about 14 minutes soon after sunrise, it hid the Sun at all three sites, and the two minutes of totality were lost. With the sky closed, the three men recorded what happened around them. Tebbutt’s chickens went to roost, his horses pricked up their ears and his dogs came to their owners for comfort. Clarke wrote that the look of Sydney and its people suggested “something terrible” was about to happen.

On Saturday 22 July 2028, Sydney finally gets another go. At 1:59 pm the Moon’s shadow will sweep over the city from the north-west. For nearly four minutes the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and every backyard from Penrith to Bondi will sit in darkness.

Miss it, and the next total eclipse in Sydney is on 3 June 2858.

Sydney, right on the centre line

The centre line of the path, where totality lasts longest, runs almost straight through Sydney. With a shadow about 230 km wide, the whole metropolitan area fits inside it with plenty of margin. The CBD gets nearly 3 minutes and 52 seconds by our calculation, and Parramatta, Hornsby, Bondi and Cronulla all come within a few seconds of that.

Totality arrives just after lunch, with the Sun about 29 degrees up in the north-west. At that height it clears most rooftops and trees, so a park, a beach or a backyard will do. Headlands such as North Head and Bradleys Head add a view of the light changing over the water.

The edges of the path are where people will get caught out. Newcastle sits just beyond the north-eastern edge and gets 99.6% of the Sun covered. Canberra gets 96%. Both will have a strange, dim afternoon, but they will miss the darkness, the corona and the stars. From Newcastle, an hour’s drive south to Gosford buys more than three minutes of totality.

Across Australia in an hour

The shadow first touches land on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands at about 8:11 am local time, then Christmas Island shortly before 9 am. Both are Australian territories in the Indian Ocean, and both get more than three and a half minutes.

Next it reaches the Kimberley in Western Australia, where the eclipse is at its best. Near Doon Doon station in the Durack Range, south of Kununurra, totality lasts 5 minutes and 10 seconds according to NASA, longer than anywhere else on the path. Eighteen years of satellite data also show clearer July skies in this north-western part of the track than farther south-east, according to the Astronomical Society of Australia.

From Kununurra to Sydney is about 3,000 km, and the shadow covers it in a little over an hour. It crosses the Tanami Desert and passes over Tennant Creek at 12:47 pm local time. Alice Springs is too far south and gets 95%, which is about as bright as a heavily overcast day, with no corona at all. Over the Channel Country of south-west Queensland, Thargomindah gets more than four minutes of totality.

Bourke, the town behind the Australian phrase “back of Bourke” for anywhere remote, gets more than four minutes too. On eclipse day its caravan parks and paddocks are likely to be full.

Dubbo follows at 1:55 pm with almost four minutes. Keepers at Taronga Western Plains Zoo will have a rare chance to see how their animals react. When researchers watched a zoo in South Carolina during the 2017 total eclipse in the United States, most of the animals that changed their behaviour acted as if night had fallen. Giraffes and flamingos showed signs of stress, and the Galápagos tortoises, usually content to sit still, started wandering around.

The shadow then crosses the Blue Mountains, where Katoomba gets about three and a half minutes, and arrives over Sydney a minute later.

New Zealand in the late afternoon

After Sydney the shadow crosses the Tasman Sea and reaches the South Island of New Zealand at about 4:15 pm. By then the winter Sun is only about 10 degrees above the north-western horizon, roughly an hour before sunset. Queenstown and Dunedin get close to three minutes of totality, and Wanaka about two and a half. Invercargill sits just outside the path with 98.8%.

Low winter light over snowy peaks will give photographers a scene no other part of the path can offer. Ten degrees is barely above the hills, though, and Queenstown sits in a deep valley where a ridge can hide the Sun. Check the view from your spot on a sunny afternoon in the days before, at the same time of day.

Where to watch the eclipse in Australia and New Zealand

• Sydney Nearly four minutes on a mild winter afternoon, with no travel needed. Pick a park, beach or headland with a clear view to the north-west.
• The Kimberley Up to 5 minutes and 10 seconds near the Durack Range, with the best weather odds on the track. Kununurra itself sits near the edge with under three minutes, so head south towards Lake Argyle, on a tour or a well-planned 4WD trip.
• Outback New South Wales and Queensland Bourke and Thargomindah get more than four minutes, with camping and station stays as the main options.
• Dubbo and the Blue Mountains Three and a half to four minutes, within a day’s drive of Sydney. A useful backup if the coast is cloudy.
• Queenstown and Dunedin About three minutes over snowy peaks and a low Sun. Spectacular if it works, but the weather odds are lower than in Australia.
• Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Nearly four minutes over the Indian Ocean, but flights are few and beds are limited.

Winter weather and the odds

Australia’s eclipse decade

For the rest of Australia, 2028 is only the start. On 25 November 2030 another total eclipse crosses South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, and its path cuts across the 2028 path between Thargomindah and Bourke. The small Queensland towns of Hungerford and Eulo sit inside both paths and will see two total eclipses in 28 months. More follow in July 2037 and December 2038. On average, any single spot on Earth sees a total eclipse only about once every 375 years.

In 1857 the newspapers told Sydney to watch through smoked or coloured glass. In 2028 the city will have proper eclipse glasses, and with luck a gap in the clouds longer than Scott’s 14 minutes.