Centre line and edge of the path: almost 5 minutes on the axis, seconds at the edge

The centre line is the axis of the path of totality: there the Moon’s shadow passes overhead in full and totality lasts as long as it can. Level with the Strait of Gibraltar, NASA gives about 4 min 54 s on the centre line. Towards the edges the duration drops, slowly at first and then all at once, until it is down to seconds: right on the northern edge is Casarabonela, with 10 s according to the IGN (Spain’s National Geographic Institute). The path is about 258 km wide at its widest, in Egypt, and a little narrower as it crosses Spain: between 236 and 239 km, according to NASA’s table.

Where the axis runs

NASA publishes the centre line and the two limits of the path, north and south, point by point. Level with Spain, the axis doesn’t touch the peninsula: it runs over the sea, south of Tarifa, and across northern Morocco. That is where the Moroccan towns with the most totality are, Martil, M’diq and Cabo Negro, with 294 s according to our engine.

That leaves the whole peninsula in the northern half of the path. Ceuta, the Spanish city on the African shore of the Strait, lies north of the axis and very close to it, which is why it has the longest totality in Spain, 4 min 48 s according to the IGN. Melilla lies on the other side, in the southern half. Along the way, the centre line also gains seconds: according to the same NASA table, it is around 4 min 48 s as it arrives from the Atlantic and goes past 5 minutes off Almería. The eclipse’s greatest duration, 6 min 23 s, comes much later, in Egypt.

Slowly near the axis, fast at the edge

If you cut across the path from south to north, the duration doesn’t fall in a straight line. Near the axis it barely changes; in the last few kilometres it collapses. Why this happens, with the geometry of the shadow, is explained in why totality lasts so differently from one town to another (in Spanish). With the IGN’s durations, from the axis towards the northern edge:

• Closest to the axis: Ceuta, 4 min 48 s; Tarifa, 4 min 38 s; Algeciras, 4 min 26 s.
• Further north: Estepona, 3 min 36 s; Marbella, 3 min 16 s; Torremolinos, 2 min 40 s.
• Near the edge: Málaga, 1 min 49 s; Ronda, 1 min 18 s; Grazalema, 41 s; Arcos de la Frontera, 36 s.
• Right on the edge: Rubite, 11 s; Casarabonela, 10 s.
• Just outside: Zahara and Almería, with 99.9% of the Sun covered and not a single second of totality.

At sea it shows even more clearly, because you can move towards the axis without changing coast. Our engine calculates points 20 km offshore, and what you gain depends on how close to the edge the shore is:

• 4 min 03 s out at sea, 20 km off the coast, opposite Marbella, when on land Marbella has 3 min 16 s according to the IGN: a little under a minute more.
• 3 min 18 s out at sea, 20 km off the coast, opposite Málaga, when on land Málaga has 1 min 49 s according to the IGN: almost a minute and a half more for the same trip.

Near the axis, on the other hand, there is almost nothing to gain: between Ceuta and the centre line there are barely a few seconds of difference.

What you see in a totality lasting a few seconds

The Moon’s limb isn’t smooth: it has mountains and valleys, and sunlight slips through the valleys as bright beads, Baily’s beads. English Wikipedia explains that they last longest near the edges of the path, where they can last around 90 seconds, whereas in the centre only a few are seen. If you stand at the edge you get a different show: beads for longer, in exchange for very few seconds of corona.

The drawback of the edge is the uncertainty: there, calculations don’t agree to the second, and sometimes not even on the verdict. Chipiona and Vícar had totality in our engine and don’t in the IGN’s figures, which is the verdict we publish. In Casarabonela, the IGN gives totality from 10:48:22 to 10:48:32, and our engine from 10:48:31 to 10:48:47: the two windows barely overlap. The rule for the glasses is to take them off at the later C2 and put them back on at the earlier C3, and in Casarabonela that leaves a single second. How to apply the rule where you are is in when to take off your eclipse glasses in totality.

Why it pays to get closer to the axis

Near the axis there are more minutes: between the edge and the area around Tarifa or Ceuta the difference is more than four minutes. There is also more margin, because there a calculation error of a few seconds changes nothing, while at the edge it can leave you without totality. And there is time for the corona: with four minutes you can look at it calmly, find Venus beside the Sun and look again.

If you can’t get to the axis, on the peninsula any step south helps, especially if it takes you away from the edge. The municipalities ranked by seconds of totality are in best villages, the full list of the 105 in this article, and the limits drawn on the map.

The “100% zone”: what it means and what it doesn’t

In Spain people talk about the “zona 100 %” (“100% zone”) when they mean the path of totality, and the phrase helps to understand it: inside, the Moon covers the whole Sun. But the number misleads when it is rounded. Almería stays at 99.9% and Granada at 99.2%, and neither has totality: no corona, no night, not one second without glasses. That is why on this site a 100.0% without totality is written as 99.9%. The difference between being inside and being left just outside is explained in our learn section.

Sources: Path of the Total Solar Eclipse of 2027 Aug 02 — NASA, Fred Espenak (centre line and limits, width of the path and duration on the centre line point by point; 258 km at its widest); Baily’s beads — Wikipedia (the lunar limb, and that the beads last longer near the edges of the path, around 90 seconds); the IGN’s verdict, durations and C2-C3 times: IGN — eclipses.ign.es (in Spanish); points at sea, our own times and the towns in Morocco: eclipseando data (skyfield + DE440s engine).