The most important question is, when will I see one! Eclipses occur in
groups of two or three,
at intervals of a little less than 6 months. But when you can see one from
your part of the world is much more complex. This section contains lots
of resources to help you find the answer:
We have special regional pages for some parts of the world:
Note that the "headline date" of each eclipse is based on Universal Time;
the actual time and date of an eclipse may be
different in your time zone. You can
select your preferred timezone for
the actual timings of the phases of an eclipse. We have a special page with
more information:
You might be interested in eclipses in the past, or farther in the future.
To help with this we have a comprehensive database of eclipses spanning
5,000 years, plus an
eclipse search engine, in the
Eclipse Database section.
But When Will I See One?
So how often is an eclipse visible from a certain part of the Earth?
The answer is different for different types of eclipse:
Solar Eclipses
It would be easy to say that eclipses happen "at random", but
that's not true, of course. Basically, the set of circumstances that
lead to an eclipse is really complex. It's totally deterministic, in
that it depends on the motions of the Earth and Moon, which are known
precisely and which are totally predictable. That's why we can
predict eclipses so far in advance. But it's so complex that the
distribution of eclipses is effectively "random" — i.e. they're
scattered all over the Earth with no easily discernible pattern.
This means that two total solar eclipses can appear in the same
place within a
year,
or a within few years — or a given location may go
thousands of years without seeing one. The average time between
total solar eclipses in a given place is something like 360 years, but
it's so variable that that doesn't really help much.
Check out the
solar eclipse listing for
a list and maps of solar eclipses, and you'll see how they're
popping up all over the place.
The listing of UK eclipses should give
you an idea of what kind of a lottery it is for any
given place. If you're interested, you can go on to read about
the mechanics behind this.
Lunar Eclipses
Lunar eclipses are different; since they occur on the Moon, any location on
Earth which can see the Moon at the time can see the eclipse. Since a lunar
eclipse happens at the full Moon, you will see it basically if it
happens at night in your local time; so
your chance of seeing a particular lunar eclipse is about 50-50. It's a little
more complex than that, because the Earth turns during the eclipse, but
that's not far off.
You can check out the
lunar eclipse listing for maps
showing where on Earth lunar eclipses can be seen from. You can read about
how lunar eclipses work if you're
still confused.
By the Numbers
And finally, the
statistics page shows you how often
particular types of eclipse occur.
