Will the 2027 eclipse be seen in Latin America? No: it's either night-time or no eclipse at all

No. The eclipse of 2 August 2027 won’t be visible from any country in Latin America. In Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador or Peru it happens in the small hours, with the Sun below the horizon: when it is 10:47 in Tarifa, in southern Spain, it is 02:47 in San Salvador. In the Southern Cone there isn’t even an eclipse. From there, you can only follow it live.

Why it can’t be seen from Latin America

To see a solar eclipse you need the Sun in the sky. This one happens in the morning in Europe and Africa: the Moon’s penumbra, the shadow that produces the partial eclipse, touches the Earth between 07:30 and 12:43 UTC. At those times it is night in the Americas, or just about to get light.

In the countries in the north of the continent, the Moon does pass in front of the Sun in the geometric sense, but with the Sun still below the horizon, so there is nothing to see. In the Southern Cone the Moon doesn’t even cross the Sun: there is no eclipse, not even at night. Across the whole continent, according to English Wikipedia, the partial eclipse only peeks in at the far north-east: the easternmost tip of Maine, in the United States, eastern Quebec and Canada’s Atlantic provinces, and southern Greenland.

What time it happens, city by city

Local time of maximum eclipse in each city, according to our calculation, and where the Sun is at that moment:

In La Paz, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Asunción, São Paulo, Recife and Natal there is no eclipse: from there the Moon doesn’t cover the Sun at all, not even below the horizon.

The Sun comes closest to rising in the Caribbean. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, it is 20.7° below the horizon; in Mexico City and Guadalajara, more than 40° below, in the middle of the night.

What you can do: follow it live

Totality, the part most people want to see, crosses the Strait of Gibraltar between 10:45 and 10:50 Spanish time (CEST, UTC+2), and Luxor, in Egypt, from 10:02 UTC. Converted to each country’s time:

It is a night for the alarm clock, or for not going to bed at all. On our live page you can follow the eclipse minute by minute as it passes over each Spanish municipality. To see the shadow’s whole route, from the coast of Cádiz to the Indian Ocean, there are the shadow’s journey and the map.

And if you want to see it with your own eyes

You have to cross the Atlantic. Totality crosses southern Spain, Gibraltar, northern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, the Halaib Triangle, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia; the duration in each country and the travel advice for each destination are in the countries in the path of totality. In Spain, the path crosses the coast of Cádiz, the Strait, the Costa del Sol and the coast of Granada and Almería, plus Ceuta and Melilla, in mid-morning with the Sun high.

Sources: local times, the Sun’s altitude and whether or not there is an eclipse in each Latin American city: eclipseando engine (skyfield + DE440s), with each country’s legal time from the IANA time zone database (tzdata); times of the penumbra on the Earth: calculated by eclipseando from NASA’s Besselian elements (F. Espenak); times of totality over the Strait and in Luxor: eclipseando engine; where the partial eclipse can be seen in North America: Solar eclipse of August 2, 2027 — Wikipedia.