Kharga Oasis Partial Eclipse
So close to the southern edge that it misses totality by a whisker.
This is the most painful entry on the whole site. Kharga Oasis does not see totality. At maximum eclipse, at 13:01:15, the Moon will cover 99.51% of the Sun and then begin to slide off again. There will be no corona, no diamond ring, no stars, no darkness — and your eclipse glasses must stay on for every second of it.
99.51% sounds like a rounding error away from the real thing. It is not. It is a different event. The gap between 99.5% and 100% is not half a per cent of the experience; it is essentially all of it.
And here is why the page is worth reading rather than closing: the fix is a short drive north. Kharga lies 158 km from the central line but only about 30 km from the edge of the path. Drive roughly 114 km north and you are standing in a full six minutes of totality. Carry on to Asyut, around 200 km up the same road, and you get 6m 07s in a town with fuel, shade and somewhere to eat afterwards. Nobody who wakes up in Kharga on 2 August has any excuse for missing this eclipse.
Which leaves Kharga free to be what it actually is: the largest of the Western Desert oases, the seat of a remarkable Persian-period temple, an early Christian necropolis painted with biblical scenes, and the pivot of the old caravan road from Sudan. A wonderful place to sleep on 1 August. The wrong place to stand on the 2nd.
The eclipse from Kharga Oasis, minute by minute
All times are EEST (UTC+3) on Monday 2 August 2027.
- 11:36 First contact The Moon takes its first bite out of the Sun’s edge. Nothing is visible without eclipse glasses — put them on now.
- 13:01:15 Maximum eclipse 99.5% of the Sun is hidden. The light turns strange and metallic, but it never gets truly dark, and eclipse glasses must stay on for every second of it.
- 14:23 Fourth contact The Moon leaves the Sun’s disc and the eclipse is over.
| Eclipse type | Partial |
|---|---|
| Maximum obscuration | 99.51% |
| Eclipse magnitude | 0.991 |
| Sun’s altitude at maximum | 82° |
| Sun’s azimuth at maximum | 175° |
| Mid-eclipse (UTC) | 10:01:15 |
Kharga Oasis on the eclipse map
The gold band is the path of totality. Click anywhere to test a spot of your own — a few kilometres genuinely matters.
Why 99.51% is not 99.51% of a total eclipse
The instinct is arithmetic: if 100% is a ten out of ten, 99.5% must be a 9.95. The instinct is wrong, because what makes a total eclipse extraordinary is not the covering of the Sun. It is the uncovering of everything else — and that only happens when the last of the photosphere goes out.
The sliver is still blindingly bright
The surface of the Sun is roughly four hundred thousand times brighter than the full Moon. Leave half a per cent of it exposed and you are still working with something on the order of a few hundred times the light of a full-moon night. In practical terms the landscape around Kharga at 13:01 will be lit at roughly the level of a very heavily overcast afternoon: strange, dim, colourless, but unmistakably day.
The corona stays hidden
The Sun’s corona — the whole point of the exercise — is about a millionth as bright as the photosphere. The remaining half-per-cent sliver at Kharga is thousands of times brighter than the corona, so the corona simply will not be visible. Nor will the pink chromosphere, the prominences, Baily’s beads or either diamond ring. Those are second-contact and third-contact phenomena, and Kharga has neither contact.
A useful pair of numbers
The data table on this page gives obscuration 99.51% and eclipse magnitude 0.991. They are not the same measure and the difference is instructive. Obscuration is the fraction of the Sun’s area hidden. Magnitude is the fraction of its diameter hidden. Magnitude is the one that decides whether you see totality: it must reach 1.000. At Kharga it reaches 0.991, so about nine parts in a thousand of the solar diameter is still showing, all of it along one edge. Nine parts in a thousand of the Sun’s diameter is a very thin line of fire, and a very thin line of fire is still the surface of a star.
For comparison, El Quseir — a place with a genuinely short, near-the-edge totality — has a magnitude of 1.003. That tiny difference, three thousandths above one instead of nine thousandths below it, is the difference between a real eclipse and an interesting afternoon.
The edge of the path is 30 km to the north
Kharga sits just outside the southern boundary of the shadow. The relevant distances are:
| Distance north | What you get |
|---|---|
| 0 km — Kharga | 99.51% partial. No totality at all. |
| ~30 km | You cross the edge of the path. Totality, but measured in seconds. |
| ~114 km | A full six minutes of totality. |
| ~200 km — Asyut | 6m 07s, in a Nile-valley city. |
Two things follow from that table, and they pull in the same direction.
First: do not aim for 30 km. The edge of the path is not a wall; it is where duration reaches zero. Standing five kilometres inside it buys you a handful of seconds and a rushed, washed-out, half-lit version of the event. Worse, the precise position of the edge depends on the profile of the Moon’s limb — its mountains and valleys — which carries an uncertainty of a kilometre or two. Thirty kilometres is where the gamble starts, not where the eclipse does.
Second: the marginal cost of going much further is small. You are already committing to a drive. Once you are in the car, 114 km instead of 30 km is another hour and it takes you from a few seconds to six minutes. That is the best value available anywhere in this eclipse. Use the map on this page to test the exact spot you have in mind before you set off.
The drive north: an actual plan for 2 August
The road from Kharga to Asyut runs north out of the depression and up onto the plateau before descending to the Nile valley. It is the route you want. Here is how the day should look.
The night before
Choose your stopping point by kilometre, not by intention, and check it on the map. Fill the fuel tank in Kharga — the plateau road is long and services are sparse. Load four litres of water per person, electrolyte salts, hats, long loose sleeves, and something that makes shade: an umbrella at minimum, ideally a vehicle you can sit in with the engine and air conditioning running.
Leave at first light
Aim to be moving by 07:00. There is no version of this plan that involves a leisurely breakfast. You are sharing a single road with everyone else who has worked out the same thing, there are checkpoints, and August heat is hard on vehicles as well as people.
Mind the clock — totality is earlier up there
This trips people up. Kharga’s own maximum is at 13:01:15, but the shadow reaches the country to the north sooner: totality at Asyut runs 12:56:51 to 13:02:58. Around your 114 km mark, expect totality near 13:00. Whatever your target, be parked, out of the car and set up by 12:15 at the very latest. Nothing about this day should be tight.
The other direction that works
A road also runs east from Kharga to the Nile at Luxor, roughly 230 km, and Luxor gets 6m 20s — the longest totality in Egypt. That is a longer drive than the Asyut road and it delivers you into the most crowded place in the country on the day, so it makes sense as a relocation the day before rather than an eclipse-morning dash. If you are willing to move your accommodation, moving it to Luxor or Asyut is strictly better than driving on the 2nd.
West and south are wrong
The road west to Dakhla and anything heading south from Kharga takes you further from the path, not closer. So does staying put. North — or north-east to the Nile valley — is the only direction that works.
If you genuinely cannot leave Kharga
Sometimes the drive is not available: no vehicle, a group that will not move, a medical reason. A 99.51% partial is still a strange and memorable afternoon, and it is worth watching properly. Here is what to expect, and what to be careful about.
From 11:36 the Moon begins to bite into the Sun’s edge — invisible without a filter. Over the next eighty minutes the light slowly drains of colour. In the last ten minutes before 13:01:15 the change becomes obvious: the light turns silvery and metallic, shadows sharpen to unnaturally hard edges, and the temperature drops noticeably. Birds go quiet. Around maximum the sky near the Sun deepens, and Venus may be findable — though you will be hunting for it rather than noticing it.
The best trick available to you is projection. Punch a few holes in a card and cast the image onto a white sheet, or simply stand under a palm and look at the ground: every gap between the fronds acts as a pinhole and the whole area under the tree fills with crescents. At 99.5% those crescents become astonishingly thin. It is the most photogenic thing that will happen in Kharga that day.
Glasses stay on for the entire eclipse. There is no safe moment.
In a total eclipse there is one interval — between the two diamond rings — when it is safe to look with the naked eye. Kharga never has that interval. From 11:36 to 14:23 there is always some photosphere showing, and a thin crescent of photosphere will damage your retina exactly as efficiently as a whole Sun. Use certified ISO 12312-2 filters throughout, and never look through binoculars, a camera or a telescope without proper solar filtration. See our eye safety guide.
Kharga itself, and the road that has always run north
None of the above should put you off coming here. Kharga is the largest of the Western Desert oases and the capital of the New Valley Governorate, a long depression of villages, wells and fields strung out below the escarpment, and it holds monuments you will not see anywhere else in Egypt.
The Temple of Hibis
Just north of the town stands the best-preserved temple in Egypt from the period of Persian rule, built largely under Darius I in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC and dedicated to Amun. Its reliefs include an extraordinary range of deities, and the sheer improbability of a Persian-sponsored Egyptian temple surviving out here makes it one of the country’s most underrated sites.
The Bagawat necropolis
On the slope above Hibis lies a city of the dead built by early Christians: hundreds of mud-brick chapels and tombs from roughly the fourth to the seventh centuries, some with painted domes showing Old and New Testament scenes. It is one of the earliest and most complete Christian cemeteries anywhere, and walking through it in low sun is an unusual experience.
The desert forts
South of town, hilltop temple-fortresses such as Qasr el-Ghueita and Qasr el-Zayyan look out over the depression from Ptolemaic and Roman foundations, guarding the wells and the caravan traffic.
The Darb el-Arbain
Kharga sat astride the Darb el-Arbain, the “Forty Days Road”, the caravan route that brought slaves, gold, ivory and livestock north from Darfur to Asyut on the Nile. For centuries, everything and everyone that arrived in this oasis was going north.
On 2 August 2027, so should you.
Kharga Oasis eclipse questions
Does Kharga Oasis see a total eclipse?
No. Kharga sees a 99.51% partial eclipse, with maximum at 13:01:15 local time (EEST, UTC+3). It is outside the path of totality, so there are zero seconds of totality, no corona and no diamond ring. The partial phases run from 11:36 to 14:23.
How far do I have to drive to see totality?
About 30 km north gets you across the edge of the path, but that only earns you seconds. Around 114 km north gives a full six minutes, and Asyut, roughly 200 km north on the same road, gets 6m 07s in a proper city. Go for the 114 km option at minimum — the extra hour of driving is worth several minutes of corona.
Which direction is the path of totality from Kharga?
North. Kharga lies just outside the southern edge of the path, 158 km from its central line. Driving west to Dakhla or south toward Baris takes you further away. The Kharga–Asyut road going north is the one that solves the problem; the road east to Luxor also works, at about 230 km.
Is 99.51% nearly as good as totality?
No, and it is important to be blunt about it. The remaining sliver of the Sun’s surface is hundreds of times brighter than a full-moon night and thousands of times brighter than the corona, so the sky never goes dark and the corona never appears. What you get is a dim, colourless, oddly metallic afternoon — interesting, but a different category of event from the six minutes available a couple of hours up the road.
Can I take my eclipse glasses off at maximum?
Never. At Kharga some part of the Sun’s surface is visible for the entire eclipse, and a thin crescent is just as damaging as the full disc. Certified ISO 12312-2 filters stay on from 11:36 to 14:23, and any binoculars, camera or telescope needs a proper solar filter over the front. The “glasses off” rule applies only inside genuine totality, which Kharga does not have.
Is Kharga still worth visiting?
Very much so — just not on eclipse afternoon. The Temple of Hibis is the finest surviving Persian-period temple in Egypt, the Bagawat necropolis is one of the earliest Christian cemeteries anywhere, and the desert forts south of town are excellent. Use Kharga as your base for the days around the eclipse and drive north on the morning of the 2nd.
Compare with nearby options
Asyut
Upper Egypt’s largest northern city, comfortably inside the path.
Full guide → Total — 6m 20s Nile ValleyLuxor
Ancient Thebes on the centre line — the single best place on Earth to watch this eclipse.
Full guide → Total — 6m 17s Western DesertBahariya Oasis
Black Desert dunes, hot springs and more than six minutes of totality.
Full guide →