Considered the world’s largest open-air museum, Luxor in southern Egypt has been home to spectacular tombs, temples and monuments for thousands of years. However, in less than a year, the City of the Sun is plunged into daytime darkness.
On August 2, 2027, a total solar eclipse will obscure parts of North Africa, Europe and the Middle East, but the longest total solar eclipse will be observable near Luxor, lasting 6 minutes and 23 seconds, making it the longest anywhere on Earth until 2114, according to NASA.
Next summer will see the second longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, after the total solar eclipse in July 2009, but that year’s largest total solar eclipse occurred over the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles southeast of the coast of Japan.
In 2027, the total orbit will curve in from the Atlantic Ocean, cross Spain, Gibraltar, and upper Morocco, wind through parts of Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Somalia, and end in the Indian Ocean.
This puts a wide range of major cities, including Cadiz in Spain, within the blackout route, with a maximum width of about 259 kilometers (161 miles). Tangier, Morocco. Oran, Algeria. Benghazi, Libya. and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
But no city can provide as much overall length and context as Luxor. The metropolis, which straddles the Nile and borders the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens respectively and is built above the ancient city of Thebes, will provide a spectacular setting for the longest total solar eclipse on land since 1991.
Roger Davies, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, will be in the prime position for what will be one of the most spectacular moments of his cosmic career: the so-called Solar Eclipse of the Century.
“Six minutes and 23 seconds is a very long time. Your eyes will get used to the darkness,” Davis told CNN.
“What you usually see are a few planets and the brightest stars. We’re hoping you’ll start seeing more.”
What’s even better is that Luxor has a high chance of sunny skies. Canadian meteorologist Jay Anderson, creator of the celestial weather tracking website Eclipsophile, said dust blown in from the Arabian and Sahara deserts is a potential problem, but the region has little summer cloud cover.
But definitely the heat is a factor. Temperatures drop during the eclipse, but there is a long way to go before daytime temperatures drop below Luxor’s peak summers, when daytime temperatures regularly exceed 41°C (105°F).
The partial solar eclipse is scheduled to begin near the city just after 11:40 a.m. local time and reach maximum totality at 1:05 p.m. Anderson warned that prolonged exposure to sweltering temperatures risks reducing the quality and output of modern camera equipment, not to mention the danger to those operating it.
As a travel scholar on one of the many travel packages that will roll out around next year’s eclipse, Davis already has a guaranteed view (perhaps from an air-conditioned hotel balcony or rooftop), but he worries many others will be left disappointed.
That’s because the biggest obstacle for skywatchers trying to capture a unique solar eclipse may not be clouds or dust, but other skywatchers. The potential for millions of eclipse viewers to converge within a relatively narrow geographic path could lead to overcrowded hotels and traffic jams, astrophysicists warned.
Ahead of last week’s eclipse, prices at some hotels in Iceland and Spain rose by 98% and 135%, respectively, according to a report in The Independent. According to Booking.com, more than 90% of Luxor accommodation bookable through its platform during next year’s eclipse is currently unavailable, with many of the remaining hotels priced at more than 2,000 pounds ($2,695) a night.
The nine-day tour, which starts at £4,950 (about $6,600) and supported by Davis, is sold out, as is the week-long program organized by the Harvard Alumni Association, in which the group flies from London via Giza to Luxor in a private jet and stays in five-star hotels.
For wider Africa, the eclipse will only further strengthen Africa’s growing reputation as a leading space tourism destination.
As light pollution worsens around the world, a third of humans, including 80% of North Americans, are unable to see the Milky Way, and more than 99% of the population in the United States and Europe live under light-polluted skies, a 2016 study found.
The three least affected countries (Chad, Central African Republic and Madagascar) were all African, the study added. Namibia and South Africa have positioned themselves as leading destinations for astronomical tourism, each boasting sites certified by the anti-light pollution nonprofit Dark Sky.
In the Karoo Desert region of South Africa, the night view is so beautiful that you can see the solar system approximately 2.5 million light years away without using a telescope.
“You can see for yourself the Andromeda Nebula, the giant galaxy closest to the Milky Way,” Davis recalls.
“This is one of the darkest places I’ve ever been, and I’ve been to a lot of observatories.”
The continent also has a storied history with solar eclipses. In 1919, British astronomer Arthur Eddington led a team to Principe Island in West Africa to photograph a total solar eclipse. This image captures the gravitational bending of starlight as it passes close to the sun, providing the final proof of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
In 1973, North Africa became the scene of a daring scientific expedition as researchers boarded Concorde 001 and chased the moon’s shadow across the Tropic of Capricorn at speeds of 1,350 mph. The speed of the supersonic jet allowed the research team to extend the duration of the total solar eclipse from 7 minutes to 74 minutes, setting an unbroken record for the longest total solar eclipse observation in history.
More recently, in 2016, stargazers in southern and central Africa witnessed a breathtaking “ring of fire” that shined brightly around the sun behind the moon, a phenomenon known as an annular solar eclipse.
For Egyptian astronomers, next year’s long blackout is a long time coming. The Cairo-based National Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG) is North Africa’s oldest research institution and home to the Kottamiya Observatory, said to be the largest telescope in the Arab world.
Although Cairo was outside its total orbit that day, with a partial solar eclipse obscuring 94% of the sun, the 50-ton telescope will still be aimed at the sky as part of a broader research program, explained NRIAG’s head of astronomy, Ashraf Shaker.
“We need people from all over the world to come, both as tourists and as scientists,” Shaker told CNN.
