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Total lunar eclipse near the December solstice — Moon at high northern declination, well-placed for northern-hemisphere viewers.
December-solstice total lunar eclipse with the Moon at high northern declination, giving it an especially long arc through the sky for northern observers.
Time to greatest eclipse
Peak in your local time: 2029-12-20T22:43:12Z
Peak UTC
22:43:12
2029-12-20
Magnitude
1.117
Moon diameter
Max duration
54m
totality
Saros
#144
23 of 71
Gamma
-0.422
Shadow axis (Earth-radii)
Americas, Europe, Africa, western Asia
Cities from the WorldClockTools clock catalog that fall in the visibility band. Each link goes to the local clock page for that city.
Editorial dossier
Historical significance
The December 20 2029 total lunar eclipse closes one of the most remarkable lunar eclipse years in modern memory: the third total lunar eclipse of calendar 2029, following the New Year's Eve 2028 total and the record-setting June 26 2029 event. With an umbral magnitude of 1.1190 and totality of 53 minutes 44 seconds, it is a deep but more conventional eclipse — shorter than the June giant but still firmly total. It is member 24 of 71 in Lunar Saros 135, a series whose total eclipses run from November 1957 through July 2354.
Comparison to other eclipses
Three total lunar eclipses in a single calendar year is exceptional — the last such occurrence was 1982, and the next is not until 2050. The 2029 trio also bookends a remarkable two-year stretch (Dec 2028 - Dec 2029) of four total lunar eclipses. A curious bonus: during this eclipse the open cluster NGC 2129 in Gemini is occulted by the Moon across parts of South America, the Atlantic and Africa — a deep-sky occultation during totality that is rare from any given location on Earth.
Astrophotography context
Greatest eclipse occurs at 22:43 UTC on December 20, with totality from 22:16 to 23:10 UTC. The eclipse is best placed for Europe, Africa, the Middle East and western and central Asia, where the Moon is high in the sky in the evening hours. From London totality occurs near 22:43 GMT with the Moon at ~55 degrees altitude in Gemini; from Nairobi near 01:43 EAT (Dec 21) at ~70 degrees. Expect a Danjon L=2 to L=3 appearance — classic brick-red. Combined with the long winter nights and the Moon's location among the bright stars of Gemini and the cluster NGC 2129, this is among the most photographically rich eclipses of the decade — wide-field setups can capture the eclipsed Moon, M35, and the occultation event in a single frame.
Top viewing destinations
Sources
Eclipse data depth
Reference fields include Total Lunar Eclipse 2029-12-20: Saros context, magnitude / obscuration, path geometry, visibility countries, and city cross-references.
Data source: NASA / JPL
Eclipse data from NASA/JPL — Fred Espenak & Jean Meeus, Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses and Five Millennium Canon of Lunar Eclipses (NASA Technical Publications NASA/TP–2006-214141 and NASA/TP–2009-214172). Public domain; re-published here with attribution.
NASA page for this eclipse (path map & circumstances)eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov
Greatest eclipse: December 20, 2029 at 22:43 UTC
