Solar Eclipses Across the Solar System — Interactive Simulator

What Do Eclipses Look Like<br>on Other Planets?

Earth's eclipse is a cosmic accident. What about the rest?

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What does a solar eclipse look like on every planet?

We built an interactive solar eclipse simulator that lets you stand on the surface of every planet in the solar system and watch a moon cross the Sun. Do other planets have eclipses? They do, and they look nothing like ours. Earth gets a four-minute total eclipse by sheer coincidence. Pluto has a moon so large it just hangs there, permanently blocking a Sun that's barely a dot. This is solar eclipse explained, planet by planet.

Earth's eclipse: a cosmic coincidence

A solar eclipse happens when a moon passes between a planet and the Sun, casting an eclipse shadow on the planet's surface. On Earth, the Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun — but also about 400 times closer. This near-perfect ratio means the Moon can just barely cover the Sun's disc, producing a total solar eclipse. Unlike a lunar eclipse, where the Earth blocks sunlight from reaching the Moon, a solar eclipse blocks the Sun's light from reaching the ground.

That ratio is unlike anything else in the solar system — it is why solar eclipses are rare even on Earth. No other planet has a moon that so precisely matches the Sun's apparent size. The eclipse stages unfold over about 90 minutes: first contact, when the Moon begins to cross the Sun; the partial phase, as the sky dims; totality, when the Sun's corona — its superheated outer atmosphere, normally invisible — blazes into view; and fourth contact, when the Moon clears the Sun entirely. In the final seconds before totality, a single bead of sunlight breaks through a lunar valley, producing the diamond ring effect.

How often does a solar eclipse happen on Earth? There are 2–5 per year somewhere on the planet, but a total eclipse at any given location occurs only about once every 375 years on average. And they won't last forever. The Moon is drifting away from Earth at about 3.8 centimetres per year. In roughly 600 million years, it will appear too small to fully cover the Sun, and total solar eclipses will end permanently.

Mars: a potato races across the Sun

Mars has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, and neither comes close to covering the Sun. Phobos — an irregularly shaped rock just 22 kilometres across — transits the Sun in roughly 30 seconds. It covers about a quarter of the solar disc. The Sun from Mars appears about two-thirds the size it does from Earth, and Phobos looks like a dark potato racing across it.

Deimos is even smaller. At just 12 kilometres wide, it appears as a tiny dark speck — covering barely 1% of the Sun's area. Its transit is more accurately called a planetary transit than an eclipse.

NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have captured real footage of both Phobos and Deimos transiting the Sun from the Martian surface.

Jupiter and Saturn: giant moons swallow a tiny Sun

The Sun from Jupiter appears just one-fifth the angular size it does from Earth. But Jupiter's moons dwarf it. Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, appears about three times wider than the Sun. Io is six times the Sun's apparent width, with volcanic eruptions glowing at its limb during the eclipse.

The Sun from Saturn is about one-tenth its apparent size from Earth. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is about 4.5 times this tiny Sun from Saturn's cloud tops. But Titan has a dense atmosphere extending 600 kilometres above its surface, so the eclipse edge is not sharp — the Sun fades through a fuzzy orange halo rather than winking out cleanly. Saturn's rings catch the last sunlight during totality.

On both gas giants, the Sun is so small and the moons so large that eclipses last for hours, not minutes. These are not the precision alignments of Earth — they are long, slow blackouts.

The ice giants and Pluto: darkness at the edge

From Uranus, the Sun appears just 1/20th its angular size from Earth — a bright point rather than a disc. Titania, Uranus's largest moon, is about eight times wider than this tiny Sun. Combined with Uranus's extreme 98-degree axial tilt, eclipses here are among the strangest in the solar system.

The Sun from Neptune is just one-thirtieth its apparent size from Earth — barely more than a bright point. Neptune's moon Triton orbits retrograde (backwards), so its transit moves right-to-left across the Sun — the opposite direction of every other eclipse in the solar system. At 28 times the Sun's apparent width, Triton blacks out the sky for hours.

The Sun from Pluto is just a bright star — 1/40th its apparent size from Earth. Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is roughly 300 times wider than this pinpoint Sun. Pluto and Charon are mutually tidally locked — each keeps the same face toward the other, so Charon neither rises nor sets. From the sub-Charon hemisphere, it...