Eclipse Visibility Map

Where along the 22 July 2028 path of totality will you actually see the Sun? Each dot is a scored place to watch from: greener means longer totality, a higher Sun and a clear sightline over the surrounding hills.

Edited by Mark Mayo. Published 9 October 2026.

Quick answer: across Australia the Sun stands high enough at mid-eclipse that terrain almost never gets in the way, so the best viewpoints are simply those nearest the centre line, where totality lasts up to 5m 10s. In Aotearoa New Zealand the Sun is low in the north-west late in the afternoon, and ridges hide it from many valley floors: there, where you stand matters as much as how close you are to the centre line.

How the score works

The map covers 27,940 viewpoints, one per cell about 5 km across. Within each cell, sixteen candidate spots are tested and the best one becomes the dot. Each candidate gets a score from 0 to 100:

• Length of totality (55%) — the time between second and third contact, relative to the longest totality anywhere on the path (5m 10s). Solved from NASA GSFC’s Besselian elements, the same calculation as the interactive path map.
• Clear horizon toward the Sun (30%) — how many degrees the Sun sits above the highest terrain in its direction, out to 80 km. Four degrees or more earns full marks. Terrain is traced through the elevation model with Earth curvature and standard atmospheric refraction.
• Sun height (15%) — a higher Sun shines through less haze and leaves more room for error. Thirty degrees or more earns full marks.

If the terrain horizon is higher than the Sun, a spot scores zero: totality will happen, but behind a hill. Because each dot is the best of sixteen spots, a grey dot means no tested spot in that cell can see the Sun; 18 of the 27,940 cells are in that position. The “share of each cell with a clear view” colouring shows the places where a good spot exists but a careless choice could still be blocked. Colours compare the whole path, so a mid-green dot in Aotearoa New Zealand and a mid-green dot in New South Wales mean the same thing.

Viewpoint quality by region

Regions are longitude bands along the track, west to east, not exact state borders. “Spots with the Sun hidden” counts every tested spot, not just the best one per cell, so it shows how easy it is to end up behind a hill by chance.

Best viewpoint near each totality city

For each city inside the path, the score of the viewpoint nearest the city centre, and the best-scoring viewpoint within 40 km. The last column is the share of all tested spots within that radius where terrain hides the Sun.

Why terrain matters more in Aotearoa New Zealand

The Moon’s shadow crosses Western Australia in the late morning, when the Sun is high in the northern sky. By the time it reaches Sydney it is early afternoon and the Sun has dropped to around 29° in the north-west. It reaches Queenstown and Dunedin late in the afternoon, with the Sun only about 8–10° above the north-western horizon. At that height a ridge a few kilometres away can sit higher than the Sun. Central Otago’s basins and Fiordland’s valleys turn grey on the map; open ridges, terraces and coastal headlands facing north-west stay green.

What the map cannot tell you

• Cloud. No one can forecast July 2028 weather, so cloud is not in the score. See weather prospects for the station climatology, and use official forecasts in the final days.
• Trees, buildings and fences. The elevation model describes bare ground. A street, forest or building can block a low Sun even where the dot is green.
• Access. A dot can fall on private property, a national park closure or a road-less ridge. Check access and permission before you plan around a spot.
• Fine terrain. Elevations come from a grid of roughly 100–150 m cells, so a small knoll, cutting or embankment right beside you is not modelled. Horizons are traced from 500 m outward.
• Path-edge precision. NASA’s elements do not model the Moon’s limb profile, which shifts the path edges by roughly 1–3 km. Dots right at the edge may see no totality at all.

Data and method

Totality duration and the Sun’s position at maximum eclipse come from NASA GSFC’s polynomial Besselian elements (Fred Espenak), with ΔT 72.1 s, solved for each candidate at its ground elevation. Sun altitudes include standard atmospheric refraction. Elevations come from the Terrain Tiles open dataset on AWS, which merges SRTM with national elevation models including Geoscience Australia’s and LINZ’s. The complete dataset is published as compact binary columns in viewpoints.bin, described by viewpoints.json (field definitions, grid and column layout).

Frequently asked questions

Plan the rest of your day

Found a promising spot? Use the interactive path map for exact contact times at any coordinate, the eclipse day planner to work out logistics, and read the eclipse-glasses safety guide before you go.