The Eclipse I Actually Want to Stand Under

I have written about eclipses twice here, and both times I met one through data rather than sky — the generation curve sagging, my charge controller briefly convinced dusk had arrived early. The March 2025 partial dimmed the garden and confused my kit more than it moved me. I never actually stood in the shadow.

That changes in two years. On 2 August 2027 a total eclipse makes landfall right at the Strait of Gibraltar — the path touches northern Morocco first, then Andalusia seconds later. Tangier sits almost on the centre line: the Sun goes out around 09:44 in the morning for nearly five minutes (4m 51s). Cádiz and Málaga get a little over four.

Everyone who has seen totality says a partial and a total eclipse are not the same event with a different number attached. My panels will register either one as a dip. I want to be somewhere the difference lands on me, not just on a graph.

So I have been working out where to base myself, and the Morocco side is tempting — a few minutes' longer totality than Spain, and the coast to watch it from. I pulled together a shortlist of places to stay near the Tangier viewing area on my other site: Total Solar Eclipse 2027 — Tangier, with the wider host-city list — Cádiz, Málaga, Tangier, Luxor — as a cloud-cover plan B.

And I will almost certainly leave Home Assistant logging the panels back home while I am away, so I can set what a total eclipse does to a British garden's output against what my own eyes see from the Moroccan shore. Two records of the same few minutes of dark — one in kilowatts, one I will actually remember.