Home › Blog › Chasing the shadow
Eclipses

Chasing the shadow: how to plan and photograph solar eclipses through 2030

· 8 min read · By Marcel Strelow
The 99.8% eclipsed sun as a razor-thin crescent low over the Atlantic beside the islet of San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, with a phone running Inverza held up in the foreground.
12 August 2026 from the "Dragonstone" coast at San Juan de Gaztelugatxe: 99.8% eclipsed, a whisker outside the totality line. Scene recreated with AI; the screen shows the real app.

On the twelfth of August, a total solar eclipse swept across Iceland and northern Spain, and it produced some of the most striking eclipse photographs in years. Not because the eclipse was unusually long. Because it happened low over the horizon, in the evening, with landscapes underneath it. That combination is rare, it is plannable, and the next five years are full of chances. Here is how eclipses work, how to photograph them, and how to plan one down to the minute before you ever book a flight.

The day before, our time-travelling photographer Nigel North showed the whole planning move in sixty seconds, lining up sun and moon in the 3D Diorama for the "Dragonstone" coast at San Juan de Gaztelugatxe:

Planning the eclipse at Dragonstone. If the player does not load, watch it on YouTube.

Total vs. ring of fire

Every solar eclipse is the same trick: the moon passes exactly between you and the sun. What decides whether you get a total eclipse or a "ring of fire" is nothing more than the moon's distance from Earth that day.

The moon's orbit is an ellipse. At perigee it is close enough to appear about 6% larger than the sun; at apogee it appears about 8% smaller. When the moon is close, it covers the sun completely: day collapses into twilight, the corona appears, and for a few minutes you can look at the sun with bare eyes. That is a total eclipse. When the moon is too far away, it cannot cover the whole disc, and at the moment of perfect alignment a blazing ring of sunlight remains around the black moon: an annular eclipse, the ring of fire. Beautiful, but the sky never goes dark and the filter never comes off.

Inverza renders this honestly: since version 1.6.3, the moon in the AR Sky and the 3D Diorama is drawn at its true apparent size for any date, so you can literally see whether it will fit over the sun.

How often does this happen?

More often than most people think. Somewhere on Earth there are between two and five solar eclipses every year. The catch is the word "somewhere": the moon's shadow track is only a few hundred kilometres wide, so any single spot on Earth waits on average around 375 years for a total eclipse to come to it. Eclipse photography is therefore travel photography. You do not wait for the eclipse; you go to it.

How to photograph one

First, safety, without exception: certified eclipse glasses for your eyes and a proper solar filter for the lens during every partial phase. Only during the minutes of totality, and only in a total eclipse, does the filter come off. In an annular eclipse it never does.

Second, the creative part. The single biggest difference between a good eclipse photo and a great one is the sun's altitude. A high-noon eclipse hangs isolated in an empty sky. An eclipse low over the horizon sits inside a landscape: a telephoto compresses the eclipsed sun against ridgelines, castles, or the sea, and the entire scene picks up the strange metallic storm light. That is exactly what made August 2026 special: totality arrived in the evening with the sun barely ten degrees above the Atlantic. Low sun also means the light path through the atmosphere is long, so colour arrives for free.

Practical settings for totality: tripod, filter off, and bracket wildly, from 1/1000 s for the inner corona to half a second for the outer streamers. For the partial phases and the ring, keep the filter on and expose for the sun's surface. And plan a wide shot too: the darkened landscape under a total eclipse is half the story.

Planning it with Inverza, from your sofa

Every eclipse through 2030 is built into Inverza with the official NASA/GSFC eclipse geometry, accurate to the kilometre at the edges of the path. The workflow:

  1. Pick a candidate region from the list below and drop a spot in Inverza, then open the 3D Diorama straight from the spot.
  2. Scrub the Diorama's time slider to the eclipse date and time. The sun and moon travel their real arcs over a real 3D model of the terrain, and when their discs overlap, an eclipse percentage appears next to the altitude readout. 100% means totality at that exact spot; an annular maximum shows the honest ring value instead.
  3. Slide along nearby spots to find where the geometry meets a foreground worth photographing: a ridge, a monument, a coastline. The Diorama shows the sun's exact compass direction and altitude over the actual terrain, so you know whether the eclipsed sun will clear that hill or sink behind it.
  4. On location, open AR Sky. The sun and moon paths are drawn onto the live camera image, so you can stand at your chosen spot the day before, hold up the phone, and see precisely where the eclipse will happen relative to your foreground. Fine-tune your tripod position by metres, not guesses. The full home-then-field workflow is the same one we walked through in Plan the frame to the minute.
The two-body problem, solved visually: an eclipse is the one photograph where the sun's position and the moon's position must agree to a fraction of a degree. The Diorama shows both discs on their real arcs, so the moment they touch, you see it, and the percentage tells you exactly how deep the alignment goes at your spot.

Where the shadow goes next

All times below are for the exact coordinates given. Set the app to the local time listed and the Diorama will show the maximum. Face the compass direction to find the sun.

6 February 2027, annular - South America

The ring of fire crosses Patagonia mid-day. High sun, so this one is about the ring itself.

2 August 2027, total - Spain to Egypt

The century's long one: over six minutes of totality in Upper Egypt. Two very different photographs on one track: a morning eclipse over the Strait of Gibraltar, or near-zenith totality above the temples of Luxor.

26 January 2028, annular - Galapagos to Iberia

The photographer's annular: the track ends at sunset in southern Spain, putting the ring of fire a few degrees over the Atlantic horizon. This is the low-sun composition of the decade.

Visualisation of the 2028 ring of fire eclipse low over the Atlantic beside the Roman columns of Baelo Claudia, with a phone running Inverza held up in the foreground.
How the 26 January 2028 sunset ring should look from the Roman ruins of Baelo Claudia. Scene visualised with AI; the screen shows the real app.

22 July 2028, total - Australia and New Zealand

Totality crosses the outback and passes directly over Sydney in mid-afternoon winter light, then reaches New Zealand's Southern Alps with the sun low in the north-west.

1 June 2030, annular - Mediterranean morning

The ring crosses North Africa and Greece just after sunrise, then runs to Siberia and Japan.

25 November 2030, total - southern Africa

A morning totality sweeping from the Namib desert across South Africa.

The short version

Twice a year or more, somewhere on Earth, the moon fits over the sun. Whether you get darkness or a ring of fire is a question of lunar distance, and whether you get a snapshot or a photograph is a question of planning: find the path, find a foreground, check the geometry in the Diorama from home, then verify it through AR Sky when you arrive. The 2026 eclipse rewarded the people who did exactly that. The 2027 and 2028 tracks will do the same.

Eclipse predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC.

Plan the eclipse in the 3D Diorama from home, verify it in the field with AR Sky. Inverza is on the App Store.

Download on the App Store
© 2026 Marcel Strelow. All rights reserved.