When Will Totality Return to Mecca? The Next Total Eclipses Over the Holy Cities

The Short Answer

On 2 August 2027 the Moon's shadow crosses Mecca and the Sun is completely covered for about five minutes. We have written a full guide to that eclipse. After it there is a very long wait.

• Mecca: the next total eclipse is on 5 February 2334, 307 years later. Mecca only just makes it: it sits about 7 km inside the edge of a path 107 km wide.
• Medina: it misses the 2027 eclipse, misses 20 March 2034 by about 15 km, and is first inside the path on 3 June 2114, with the Sun almost overhead. After that comes 12 January 2271, with the Sun only about 13 degrees above the horizon.
• The Gulf and Turkey: on 3 September 2081 the path runs from Istanbul and Ankara over Baghdad and Kuwait to Doha, Manama and Abu Dhabi.

These dates come from NASA's published path tables, not from this site's own calculation, for a reason explained below. They also come with a warning. Where a shadow falls 100 or 300 years from now depends on how fast the Earth will be spinning then, and nobody can know that to the precision the question needs. Read 2334 as "about then, and Mecca is a borderline case", not as a promise.

How to Tell Whether a City Is Inside the Path

For every total eclipse NASA publishes a table of the central line, the track of the exact middle of the Moon's shadow, with its latitude and longitude every two minutes, and the width of the path. To test a city:

1. Find the point on the central line that is closest to the city.
2. Measure the distance from the city to that point.
3. Compare it with half the path width. If the city is closer than that, the Sun is completely covered. If not, it is a partial eclipse, however deep.

A worked example, with the 2027 eclipse. The central line passes 73 km from Mecca. The path is 259 km wide, so half of it is about 129 km. 73 is less than 129, so Mecca is inside, by 56 km. The nearer a place is to the central line, the longer totality lasts: 6 minutes 13 seconds on the line itself at Mecca's longitude, about 5 minutes 10 seconds at Mecca.

Now Medina in 2027. It is 314 km from the line, which is 185 km beyond the edge of the path. The guide to that eclipse says Medina is "roughly 185 km from the edge of the path". The two calculations, made separately, agree.

Six Eclipses, Two Cities

The chart shows the six total eclipses that come nearest to the Hijaz between 2027 and 2334. The shaded band is the path, drawn as plus and minus half its width around the central line. A filled marker is a city inside the band, a hollow one a city outside it.

Read the rows one at a time. In 2027 Mecca is inside, comfortably, and Medina is far to the north. In 2034 the path passes north of both cities and Medina is only just outside it. In 2053 Mecca lies 47 km outside the path, less than half the path's width. In 2114 the path is wide and Medina is close to its middle. In 2271 Medina is close to the middle again, but with the Sun low in the sky. In 2334 the path is narrow and Mecca sits near its southern edge.

Every Near Miss, in Numbers

We looked at every eclipse, from 2027 to 2334, in which this site's own calculation covers at least 90 per cent of the Sun at Mecca or Medina, and checked each one against NASA's table.

"Outside by" is the distance beyond the edge of the path, not from the central line. Two more eclipses that pass close are annular, not total, so a bright ring of the Sun stays visible: 6 April 2266, which leaves Mecca 76 km outside its path, and 30 October 2274, whose path covers Medina. We found no other total eclipse over either city. That is a search of the near misses, not a full read of NASA's catalogue, so treat "nothing in between" as "nothing we found".

The Closest Call: 20 March 2034

Medina misses totality on 20 March 2034 by about 15 km. It sees almost the whole Sun covered, 99.8 per cent by our calculation, and still no totality. Half the path is 75 km and Medina is 90 km from the line. About 160 km to the west, on the Red Sea coast, the picture reverses: Yanbu is 58 km from the line, which puts it inside by about 17 km. By our calculation the eclipse crosses the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia on its way from West Africa to South Asia, so it is the nearest chance for people in the Hijaz. Both margins are small enough that a few kilometres of error would flip the answer, so check your exact viewing spot against a current path map before you travel.

The Gulf Gets Its Turn: 3 September 2081

The greatest eclipse of 3 September 2081 falls over the Persian Gulf, with totality of up to 5 minutes 33 seconds on a path about 247 km wide. The track runs from Istanbul across Turkey and Iraq to the Gulf. The distances below are from NASA's central line.

Dubai misses it and Riyadh is far out of the path. Neither Mecca nor Medina is anywhere near it: they are more than 1,000 km from the central line.

Why Nobody Can Promise 2334

An eclipse path is the Moon's shadow laid on a spinning Earth. The position of the shadow in space can be calculated centuries ahead with great accuracy. Where the Earth is turned at that moment cannot. The difference between uniform time and the time kept by the Earth's rotation is called delta T. Tides slow the Earth's spin by a small, steady amount, but the core, the oceans, the atmosphere and the ice caps add changes that nobody can forecast. That is the reason leap seconds are announced only months ahead.

How much does it matter? The Earth turns 15 degrees an hour, so every minute of error in delta T moves a path about 26 km east or west at Mecca's latitude. For 2334, NASA's tables assume a delta T of 586.5 seconds. This site's own calculation, which agrees closely with NASA's for eclipses in this century, assumes 826 seconds for the same year. The gap is 240 seconds, which on its own shifts the path by about 100 km, roughly the whole width of the 2334 path. The two calculations put the greatest eclipse of 5 February 2334 about 3.6 degrees of longitude apart.

Mecca's margin in 2334 is 7 km. That is less than a third of a minute of delta T. In plain words: the true position of that path is not known to within the width of the path, and whether Mecca is inside is close to a coin toss. The same worry applies, less sharply, to 2114 and 2271.

There is a real example of how small errors matter even in the near term. In 1987 NASA's Fred Espenak predicted a delta T of 85.7 seconds for the April 2024 eclipse. The actual value was 69.2 seconds. That 16.5 second gap moved the real path about 6.7 km from where the forecast put it.

This is also why the path map on the eclipses page is drawn only for the eclipses of the next few years. A forecast a few years ahead is good to a second or two. A forecast 300 years ahead is a different kind of statement.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do total eclipses come back to the same place so rarely?

The path is narrow, from about 100 to 250 km wide, and the Earth's surface is large. Statistically, a given spot on Earth sees a total solar eclipse about once in 375 years (Jean Meeus's estimate). Mecca's wait of 307 years is the same order of size. Some places wait far longer, and some get several in a few decades.

Where can I see a total eclipse sooner?

Within reach of the Muslim world: 20 March 2034 (West Africa, the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia and South Asia, by our calculation) and, for the Gulf, 3 September 2081. Further away, 22 July 2028 crosses Australia and New Zealand. The eclipses page lists the next eclipses with local times for your saved place.

Why does this site not just calculate it?

For eclipses in this century it does, and the result agrees closely with NASA's: the 2081 greatest eclipse differs by under a tenth of a degree. After about 2100 the calculation and NASA's tables part company on delta T, and they are no longer interchangeable. NASA's tables are the reference, so that is what this post uses. For how to read an eclipse season, see why eclipses come in pairs.

See Also

• Total solar eclipse over Mecca, 2 August 2027
• The annular eclipse on the eve of Ramadan 1448
• Why solar and lunar eclipses come in pairs
• Why a solar eclipse falls on the 29th of the Hijri month
• The eclipses page, with local circumstances for any place.

References

• Espenak, F. and Meeus, J. (2006). Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses: -1999 to +3000. NASA/TP-2006-214141. https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEpubs/5MCSE.html
• Espenak, F. Path tables for each eclipse, for example https://eclipsewise.com/solar/SEpath/2301-2400/SE2334Feb05Tpath.html (5 February 2334) and https://eclipsewise.com/solar/SEpath/2101-2200/SE2114Jun03Tpath.html (3 June 2114). The pages for the other dates follow the same pattern.
• NASA Eclipse Web Site. Eclipse Predictions and Earth's Rotation. https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/rotation.html
• timeanddate.com. How Earth's rotation affects eclipse predictions. https://www.timeanddate.com/news/astronomy/earth-rotation-affects-eclipses
• Berman, B. How often do total solar eclipses occur? The Old Farmer's Almanac. https://almanac.com/total-solar-eclipses-how-often-do-they-happen