Annular eclipse — Easter Island & Patagonia (2024)
More than six minutes of ring of fire above the moai of Easter Island, ending at sunset over Patagonia.
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The moment of Annular eclipse — Easter Island & Patagonia (2024): https://nowsky.org/e/annular-eclipse-2024 — opens at the right place and time, replayable, no login.
Available views: Orbit ✓ · Sky ✓
The story
The annular eclipse of 2 October 2024 spent most of its path over the South Pacific. It touched land in effectively two places — Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in mid-ocean, and Patagonia at the tip of South America. Over Easter Island the ring lasted more than six minutes around 14:07 local time, the Sun a bright hoop above the rows of moai.
The shadow then crossed more than 3,000 km of sea to reach Aysén in Chile and Santa Cruz province in Argentina. In Patagonia the Sun was already low; the ring closed around 17:20 in the evening sky and slid on toward the horizon. Coastal towns such as Puerto Deseado lay inside the track.
October is spring in the south, but Patagonian wind and cloud are fickle, and success varied from one site to the next — within the same province a few tens of kilometres separated clear skies from overcast. Easter Island was mostly clear, the whole island one observing platform.
A hard-to-reach path means few saw it in person: flights to Easter Island are limited and southern Patagonia sparsely populated. It became an eclipse watched far more by live stream and simulation than by eye. The sky replay shows the ring above Easter Island; the orbit view shows the shadow crossing the Pacific.
Why it matters
Easter Island carries astronomical heritage of its own: studies have long linked the placement of moai and ahu platforms to solstice sunrise directions, and a ring Sun above them put archaeoastronomy and modern observation in one frame.
With so much of the track over water, ship- and aircraft-based observation was attempted. Baily's beads were imaged in the clean air above the South Pacific to measure the solar radius, and Chilean observatories logged temperature and wind changes during the partial phases.
The event also showed how a hard-to-reach eclipse is consumed: thousands on site, millions on live streams, and more still who replayed it from their own location in a simulation.
How to watch
Annular track: South Pacific → Easter Island (14:07 local, over six minutes) → Aysén, Chile → Santa Cruz, Argentina (Puerto Deseado around 17:20, a low evening Sun). Partial phases were seen across Chile and Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil. Not visible from Korea.
A low evening Sun is no dimmer. Patagonia called for an open western horizon and shelter from the wind, with filters kept on throughout; faster shutter speeds helped cameras cope with the turbulence of a low Sun.
The sky replay tracks the Sun from the Hanga Roa coordinates on Easter Island; switch the location to Puerto Deseado for the evening ring sinking toward the horizon.
See this for yourself — open that sky at that moment · replay the moment in the orbit view
Background
The eclipse is the 17th of Saros 144. Its predecessor on 22 September 2006 was an annular over the South Atlantic; its successor on 14 October 2042 crosses the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia. Series 144 is still young, its paths biased toward southern seas.
It was the "hard" eclipse of 2024, the counterpart to April's total over North America. Two eclipses six months apart, one seen by thirty million and the other by a few thousand, show that how much land a path crosses is everything.
Patagonia had its previous central eclipse only four years earlier, the total of 14 December 2020 over Pucón and Neuquén, and gets another total on 5 December 2048.
Easter Island was also in the path of the total eclipse of 11 July 2010. Seeing both a total and an annular eclipse within fourteen years is rare for a remote Pacific island, and both times photographs with the moai statues survive. The 2024 annular path ran from Easter Island through Patagonia — Chile’s Aysén region and Argentina’s Santa Cruz province — and ended over the Atlantic. In the southern early spring Patagonia is windy with fast-moving cloud, and observers moved within the path to find open sky.
FAQ
How long did the ring last over Easter Island?
More than six minutes, with maximum around 14:07 and the Sun about 60 degrees high.
How did it look from Patagonia?
The ring closed around 17:20 low in the evening sky and then sank toward the horizon.
Why did so few see it in person?
Most of the path was ocean, and the land sections — Easter Island and southern Patagonia — are remote and thinly populated.
Was it visible from Korea?
No — a southern-hemisphere path, and early morning in Korea.
Related
- The 2020 total eclipse over Chile and Argentina
- The 2024 North American total eclipse
- The 2028 annular over South America and Iberia
- The Sun — object index
- The Moon — object index
Times and figures are approximate — verify with official sources when planning travel. Simulation uses J2000 mean elements.