Eclipse Calendar 2028

The eclipse calendar 2028 holds 5 eclipses: 2 of the Sun and 3 of the Moon, arriving in 3 eclipse seasons.

That is more than the usual four, which makes the eclipses of 2028 a slightly crowded set. A year gets an extra eclipse when a season falls early or late enough that a third alignment squeezes in before the window closes.

The deepest alignment of the year is on December 31, with the Sun 3.60° from a lunar node at 10.6° Cancer. That number is the one that decides how central the eclipse is — the smaller it gets, the more squarely the shadow crosses.

Eclipses in 2028 land in Cancer, Aquarius, Capricorn. Because they can only happen near the nodal axis, and the axis moves slowly, a year's eclipses cluster into a small set of opposite signs rather than scattering round the zodiac.

January 12 — a partial lunar eclipse at 21.6° Cancer. Part of the Moon enters the dark shadow, giving it a visible bite for an hour or two.

January 26 — an annular solar eclipse at 6.2° Aquarius. The Moon is far enough from Earth to look slightly too small, so a ring of sunlight is left around it. There is no moment when it is safe to look without a filter.

July 6 — a partial lunar eclipse at 15.3° Capricorn. Part of the Moon enters the dark shadow, giving it a visible bite for an hour or two.

July 22 — a total solar eclipse at 29.8° Cancer. The Moon covers the Sun completely, but only along a band roughly a hundred kilometres wide; everywhere else on the daylit side sees a partial phase.

December 31 — a total lunar eclipse at 10.6° Cancer. The Moon passes fully into the Earth's shadow and usually turns deep red. Visible from the entire night side of the planet and safe to watch with the naked eye.

The eclipses of 2028 do not spread themselves through the year. They arrive in seasons about a month long, when the Sun passes close enough to a lunar node for an alignment to be possible, and within a season a solar and a lunar eclipse fall roughly a fortnight apart.

The eclipses of 2028 fall into three seasons, which is what happens when a season sits at the very start or end of the year and its partner falls outside it. The three groups below are not three separate phenomena — the outer ones are halves of seasons the calendar year cuts through.

A total solar eclipse, where the Moon covers the Sun completely — visible only from a narrow band, and only for minutes.

An annular solar eclipse, where the Moon is too far from Earth to cover the Sun and leaves a ring of light. Never safe to view without a filter, at any point.

A total lunar eclipse, where the Moon passes fully into the Earth's shadow and usually turns deep red. Visible from the whole night side of the planet and completely safe to watch.

The signs the eclipses of 2028 fall in are not chosen and they are not symbolic in origin. An eclipse can only occur when the Sun is close to one of the two points where the Moon's orbit crosses the plane of the Earth's — the lunar nodes — and those two points sit opposite each other in the zodiac.

So the eclipse degrees of any year are pinned to wherever the nodal axis happens to be. The nodes drift backwards about 19° a year, which is slow enough that a single axis governs eclipses for roughly eighteen months and fast enough that no two consecutive years look quite alike.

That is why the eclipse calendar 2028 shows a small cluster of signs rather than a spread. It is also why comparing one year against the next tells you more than looking at either alone, and why the neighbouring years are linked at the bottom of this page.

There are two honest ways to use a page like this, and one dishonest one.

The first is observational. Find the eclipses of 2028 visible from where you are, note the local time, and for a solar eclipse arrange proper filters well in advance. A lunar eclipse needs nothing but a clear sky and the patience to watch for an hour.

The second is astrological, and it depends on the degree column rather than on the date. Compare the degrees above against your own chart; the ones that touch something are the ones worth attention. Nothing about the year's eclipses is personal until that comparison is made.

The dishonest use is treating a date as a forecast. An eclipse does not schedule events and no reading can tell you what will happen to you on a given day. What the tradition offers is a way of timing your own attention, which is a much smaller claim and the only one made here.

The first eclipse of the year falls on January 12 and the last on December 31, leaving a stretch of 163 days between the end of one season and the start of the next when no alignment is possible at all.

That quiet stretch is not a lull in activity so much as a consequence of geometry: the Sun has moved away from both nodes and cannot come near either until it has travelled far enough round the ecliptic. The interval between eclipse seasons averages about 173 days, which is why the seasons of 2028 sit roughly three weeks earlier than the year before rather than on the same dates.

Within a season the spacing is much tighter. A solar and a lunar eclipse fall about a fortnight apart because they need the same node from opposite ends: the Sun near it for one, the Sun near it and the Moon opposite for the other. Half a lunar month separates the two conditions.

Of the 5 eclipses this year, the one on December 31 at 10.6° Cancer comes nearest to a node, at 3.60°. It is a Lunar · Total, and 100% of the disc is covered at greatest eclipse.

Node gap is worth understanding because it is the one figure that ranks the eclipses of 2028 — or any year — honestly. Depth of shadow, width of the visible band and duration all follow from how squarely the shadow axis meets the Earth, and that is what this number measures. Everything past about fifteen degrees produces no eclipse at all.

What it does not measure is whether you will see anything. A deep eclipse over open ocean is invisible to almost everyone, and a modest partial one over a populated continent is watched by millions. Depth and visibility are separate questions, and only the first is a property of the eclipse itself.

Every degree in this eclipse calendar 2028 is the same for everyone. What differs is whether any of them sit close to something in your own chart — a planet, an angle, the opposite point, or a square.

With the eclipses of 2028 concentrated in Cancer, Aquarius, Capricorn, the placements most directly involved are the ones in those signs and the ones opposite them. If you have nothing there, this year's eclipses are astronomy rather than astrology as far as you are concerned.