26 January 2028: a ten-minute ring of fire from the Amazon to Andalusia

In May 1919, two British astronomers, Andrew Crommelin and Charles Davidson, photographed the eclipsed Sun from Sobral, in north-east Brazil, while a Brazilian team led by Henrique Morize studied its corona. The British pair were testing Einstein’s new theory, which said that the Sun’s gravity should bend the light of stars behind it. Their best plates showed a bend of 1.98 arcseconds, close to Einstein’s prediction of 1.75. A few years later Einstein wrote: “The question that my mind formulated was answered by the sunny sky of Brazil.”

On 26 January 2028 the Moon crosses the Sun over Brazil again, this time in the Amazon. The Sun will not disappear. It will turn into a ring of fire that lasts up to 10 minutes and 30 seconds.

Why the ring lasts more than ten minutes

An annular eclipse happens when the Moon is too far from the Earth to cover the whole Sun. On 26 January 2028 the Moon is two days from its farthest point from the Earth, so it looks smaller than usual. The Earth passed its closest point to the Sun at the start of January, so the Sun looks slightly larger than average. A small Moon needs a long time to cross the middle of a large Sun.

At the point of greatest eclipse, near the Brazilian state of Amapá, the ring lasts 10 minutes and 27 seconds. About 400 km to the south-west, just north of the equator in Pará, it lasts 10 minutes and 30 seconds. Eclipses repeat in cycles of 18 years and 11 days, and the previous eclipse in this cycle, on 15 January 2010, set the record for this millennium, with 11 minutes and 8 seconds over the Indian Ocean.

The Moon covers about 85% of the Sun at the peak. Daylight turns pale, but the sky never gets dark. Under trees, the patches of light on the ground turn into hundreds of small rings.

Across the Andes and the Amazon

The ring starts in the Pacific and reaches the Galápagos shortly after sunrise, with more than five minutes at Puerto Ayora. It then crosses the Andes of southern Ecuador, where Cuenca has about six minutes and Loja more than eight, both early in the morning.

From the mountains the shadow moves east over the Amazon basin. Iquitos in Peru, a city of about half a million people with no road link to the rest of the country, sees more than eight and a half minutes. In Leticia, on the triple border of Colombia, Peru and Brazil, the ring lasts more than nine. Tefé is close to ten, and Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, has about seven.

The longest ring falls over the forests of Pará and Amapá around midday. From there the path crosses the far south of Suriname and the southern half of French Guiana, and reaches the Atlantic near Oiapoque. Belém, Macapá, Cayenne and Paramaribo see only a partial eclipse.

Late afternoon over Portugal and Spain

After a long crossing of the Atlantic, the ring reaches Madeira, with almost seven minutes over Funchal and the Sun 18 degrees up. Next it crosses the Algarve. Faro, Albufeira and Portimão have six to seven minutes at about 4:51 pm, with the Sun 9 degrees above the south-western horizon. Lisbon misses the ring by a few dozen kilometres.

According to the Instituto Geográfico Nacional, the ring covers about half of Spain: most of Andalusia, parts of Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, the Madrid region, Murcia, Valencia, Aragón and Catalonia, and the western Balearic Islands. Seville and Córdoba have a little over seven minutes at about 5:52 pm, roughly half an hour before sunset. Valencia also has about seven, but with the Sun only 2 degrees up, so it needs a clear view to the south-west. The city of Madrid sees only a partial eclipse.

With the Sun 7 degrees above the south-western horizon, the ring can be photographed beside the Giralda in Seville or above the Mezquita in Córdoba. It is Spain’s third central eclipse in 18 months, after the total eclipses of 12 August 2026 and 2 August 2027. Before that, the last ring of fire over Spain came on 3 October 2005, when Madrid had about four minutes.

Where to watch the eclipse on 26 January 2028

The longest rings fall in the wettest part of the path. Late January is the middle of the rainy season in the Amazon, while southern Spain has some of the sunniest winter weather in Europe.

• Seville and Córdoba A little over seven minutes, and the best weather odds on the path. Find an open view to the south-west, such as a hilltop, a rooftop terrace or the countryside outside town.
• Madeira Almost seven minutes, with the Sun 18 degrees up, the highest anywhere in Europe on the path. Look for a viewpoint facing south-west over the sea.
• The Algarve Six to seven minutes with the Sun about 9 degrees up. West-facing headlands such as Ponta da Piedade near Lagos give a clear sea horizon.
• Iquitos and Leticia Eight and a half to nine and a half minutes in the morning, deep in the rainforest. Go only if you can accept a high chance of cloud.
• Manaus About seven minutes in a city of two million, with the same rainy-season risk.
• Loja and southern Ecuador More than eight minutes in the Andes, with the Sun about 30 degrees up in the early morning and mountain weather that can change fast.
• The Galápagos More than five minutes just after sunrise, in the islands’ warm season.

The next return

The next eclipse in the same cycle comes on 5 February 2046. Within the 2020s, the closest rival to the Amazon’s ten minutes is the ring of 6 February 2027, which lasts up to 7 minutes and 51 seconds.