Caoimhín's Content

Today we are finally going to look 160 years into the future, plus a few months, to catch what looks like the longest eclipse we’re ever going to get, very close to the hypothetical maximum duration of an eclipse. Just before we get into it, here in Ireland and across a lot of the northern hemisphere, the aurora was visible last night. The aurora borealis, of course, the aurora borealis is the only aurora we get in the northern hemisphere, the aurora australis of course, is for those down in the south. Unfortunately, due to a combination of cloud cover and light pollution, I didn’t get to see the aurora last night, but it was visible over all of Ireland and huge stretches of Europe. In fact, the aurora that was visible last night was visible as south as Greece down in the Mediterranean, which is very, very far south for an aurora to be visible. Of course, aurorae normally aren’t even visible as far south as Ireland, you usually need to be much further north in places like Iceland, Norway, but thanks to the powerful solar flare that was released by the Sun, we did get to see aurorae as far south as here in Ireland and other areas in Europe.

As usual for any eclipse, we need to be very accurate as to where we’re looking from, the very maximum of the eclipse is only going to occur in a reasonably small area. I’ve estimated based on the maps I’ve seen indicating a peak location in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of South America. Just guessing of course isn’t the best option, with my initial guess being a few degrees off here, only getting 86% obscuration. Usually I would hop around the map using little hints provided by Stellarium, such as the fact that my initial location was 500 kilometers away from the azimuth, 12 and a bit degrees away from where the eclipse is best. Rather than hopping around and trying to locate the best location for the eclipse, I’m going to enter the coordinates for the maximum of the eclipse, the actual latitude and longitude necessary necessary to get the best view. This brings us to 7.4°N 46.5°W. We’ll need to move through time a little bit to get to the exact maximum. Once we reach it we have a perfect eclipse, lasting 7 minutes and 29 seconds. The eclipse that we took a look at back in -743, hundreds of years ago, also ran for 7 minutes and about 25 seconds, so not quite as long as this eclipse, which is a whole minute longer than the eclipse of the century we have coming up next year in 2027. Of course, if you’ve been following along with this channel, you, know that we already had a solar eclipse in 2009 that was a couple of seconds longer than the eclipse coming up in 2027.

This eclipse in 2186 is even longer and very close to the longest we could possibly get. Taking a look at the Moon, we are 351,000 kilometers away from it. The Moon is very close to perigee, its closest position to the Earth, the Earth is very close to aphelion, our furthest position from the Sun. Just like the other extreme eclipses, these factors are lining up. We have the Moon at its closest to us, appearing its largest, and the Sun at its furthest from us, appearing its smallest.

Now, for the ideal location, the best place to see the eclipse, we’re out in the ocean. However, the path of the eclipse does travel over South America, so even though this is the maximum location of the eclipse, the eclipse will be visible as a total eclipse from some other locations. Moving back onto the continent of South America, many locations will only get a partial eclipse, but that’s okay, we can move just a little bit. This puts us a few hundred kilometers off the best part of the eclipse, but we’re not looking for the best part of the eclipse. We’re just looking for somewhere else where this eclipse is going to be visible as a total eclipse. The path of the eclipse is slightly curved. We’re seeing the eclipse very close to the equator and very close to the subsolar point, but the path of the eclipse still follows a sort of a curve across the Earth. We’re orbiting the Sun’s equator, but the Moon is orbiting our equator, a slightly different path, so that makes the paths line up just little bit differently. It looks like it’s going to be tricky to get the total eclipse to actually occur, to look total, from anywhere other than its absolute best point, which is unfortunate because these eclipses do extend over an area, but we will hunt around just a little bit more in case we can get it up to perfect.

A very good partial eclipse at least is going to be visible over the large areas of South America, again over 100 years into the future. This eclipse is longer than any other eclipse that we’re going to get. Of course, it’s not the longest eclipse we’re going to get this century because it’s not occurring this century. As it’s not occurring this century, our eclipse in 2027 is not competing with this eclipse. By making small adjustments to our latitude and longitude, we can zero in on a place where the eclipse will be total. The amount of the Sun that is visible is slowly going down as we keep drifting further west. The amount of Sun being obscured is changing, it is slowly getting smaller. Once we’re in the right place, everything lines up perfectly. This lets us see a perfect eclipse from somewhere around northern Guyana. This is an area along the path of the eclipse that isn’t at the maximum of the eclipse. Still, we’re getting 6 minutes and 44 seconds of darkness.

This eclipse is longer than our eclipse of the century, even when you’re observing it from less than ideal conditions. When I say less than ideal conditions, I mean when you’re not directly under the shadow of the Sun, it’s not the perfect place to observe it. Of course, you do need to be on a boat in the Atlantic to be in the perfect place to observe it, from this alternate position, you’re actually standing on solid land. The path of the eclipse kind of arcs across the top, or north, of Southern America, still in the northern hemisphere. It is only going to be visible for a reasonably small location on solid land, but for an incredible length of time, it is the longest eclipse that we’re probably ever going to get. Eclipses can’t get much longer than this, it is pretty much perfect, a whole minute more perfect than the eclipse of the century that we’re going to be getting in 2027. I’ve wanted to show this eclipse for quite a while, this very long eclipse that really beats out our eclipse of the century and is still visible in the future. Of course, the other eclipse that beats out our eclipse of the century was visible in the very distant past and then of course, just barely beating out our eclipse of the century was the other long eclipse this century, which everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten about. Thankfully, we have plenty more eclipses this year as well, including an annular eclipse that’s coming up just in February.

Speaking of things that are up, after a couple of technical difficulties, there is now an article going through a language I created, from a video on Caoimhín’s Other Content, my second YouTube channel. There is also an article based on an Irish language video, talking about various comets that are visible this month and will be leaving our solar system forever when they eventually get to the edge, which should be up around the same time as this one. The video does have English subtitles so you can still enjoy it even if you aren’t a fluent Irish speaker, and the article is of course in English.

I hope that you enjoyed taking a look at this even longer eclipse, much longer than the eclipse of the century that we’re getting next year and I hope that you’ll stick around to see the articles on the eclipses we are getting this year in 2026. If you did enjoy this piece then please do like it. If you like this kind of content then please subscribe to this website and my Youtube channels. Thank you very much for watching and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.