Sharm El Sheikh Partial Eclipse
South Sinai catches a 96% partial — close, but the ferry to Hurghada beckons.
Sharm El Sheikh sees 95.55% of the Sun covered at 13:05:03 on Monday 2 August 2027, and not one second of totality. Nowhere in Sinai does. The entire peninsula — every beach, every reef, every summit, from Taba to Ras Mohammed — lies north of the path, and the shadow will pass by out over the Red Sea to the south-west.
What makes Sharm a harder case than Hurghada is not the percentage. It is the water. Hurghada sits on the mainland coast with a highway running straight into the path; Sharm sits at the tip of a peninsula with the Gulf of Suez between it and everywhere useful. From here, reaching totality is not a morning drive. It is a logistical project that has to be solved before you fly.
None of which is an argument against Sharm as a holiday. It has the best reef diving in the northern Red Sea and some of the most dependable weather on the planet. It is an argument for deciding — now, not in July 2027 — whether you are coming for a beach week that happens to include a deep partial eclipse, or for the eclipse itself. Those are two different trips.
The eclipse from Sharm El Sheikh, minute by minute
All times are EEST (UTC+3) on Monday 2 August 2027.
- 11:41 First contact The Moon takes its first bite out of the Sun’s edge. Nothing is visible without eclipse glasses — put them on now.
- 13:05:03 Maximum eclipse 95.6% of the Sun is hidden. The light turns strange and metallic, but it never gets truly dark, and eclipse glasses must stay on for every second of it.
- 14:24 Fourth contact The Moon leaves the Sun’s disc and the eclipse is over.
| Eclipse type | Partial |
|---|---|
| Maximum obscuration | 95.55% |
| Eclipse magnitude | 0.953 |
| Sun’s altitude at maximum | 79° |
| Sun’s azimuth at maximum | 201° |
| Mid-eclipse (UTC) | 10:05:03 |
Sharm El Sheikh on the eclipse map
The gold band is the path of totality. Click anywhere to test a spot of your own — a few kilometres genuinely matters.
The Sinai problem: a peninsula in the wrong place
Look at the map on this page and the geometry is immediately obvious. The path of totality, roughly 258 km wide, crosses the Egyptian mainland and cuts the Red Sea coast between Hurghada and Safaga before running out over the water towards Jeddah. South Sinai sits above and to the east of that line. Sharm is close enough to the edge to get a spectacular partial — and firmly outside it.
Height does not help
A recurring instinct is to climb. Sinai has Egypt’s highest ground: Mount Catherine at 2,629 m, and Mount Sinai itself, the classic pre-dawn pilgrimage above St Catherine’s Monastery. It makes no difference whatsoever. The Moon’s umbra is a shadow more than a quarter of a million kilometres long and a couple of hundred kilometres wide; two and a half kilometres of altitude moves you an utterly negligible distance towards its edge. If your feet are outside the path, so is the rest of you. Altitude buys clean air and a big horizon. It does not buy totality.
What Sharm does get
A deep partial: the Sun reduced to a thin crescent 79° above the horizon, a flattening of the light over the Gulf of Aqaba, sharpened shadows on the desert mountains behind the town, and a real drop in temperature at the hottest hour of the year. Between 11:41 and 14:24 the whole thing plays out over two hours and forty-three minutes, and at no point during it can anyone safely look at the Sun without a certified filter.
Three ways off the peninsula, honestly assessed
1. Fly out, the day before
The reliable answer. Sharm El Sheikh International is a major airport with substantial domestic traffic to Cairo, and Cairo connects to Luxor several times a day in normal conditions. Whether any direct Sharm–Luxor or Sharm–Hurghada services are running in August 2027 is not something anyone can promise today, so check schedules rather than assume them. Either way, this is a 1 August movement, not a 2 August one: sleep inside the path in Luxor (6m 20s) or Marsa Alam (5m 29s) and let eclipse morning be a lie-in.
2. The Gulf of Suez crossing — tempting, and fragile
Hurghada is only about 89 km from Sharm across the water, and a fast-ferry link between the two has operated on and off for many years. When it runs, it turns a 900 km drive into a couple of hours. But it has been suspended and reinstated repeatedly, schedules are seasonal, and sailings are weather-dependent on a gulf that gets genuinely windy.
Treat any ferry as a bonus, never as the plan. And remember that arriving in Hurghada does not finish the job: Hurghada is itself 65 km outside the path, so you still need road transport a good way south of Safaga on the day. If you intend to use the ferry, cross on 1 August, sleep on the mainland, and drive south in the morning.
3. Driving round the top — a very long day
The only land route out of South Sinai runs north up the Gulf of Suez coast through El Tor and Ras Sudr to Suez, crosses beneath the canal, and then turns south again down the mainland Red Sea coast. Sharm to Suez alone is around 286 km in a straight line and a good deal more by road; add the run south past Hurghada and into the path and you are looking at something in the region of 800–900 km. In August. To arrive at a fixed minute. This is a two-day drive dressed up as a one-day drive, and it is not a sensible eclipse plan unless you are already driving that way for other reasons.
Do not build an eclipse trip that depends on a single boat
Totality at Marsa Alam begins at 13:08:02 and cannot be rescheduled. Any plan with one ferry, one flight or one road in it and no slack is a plan that fails completely rather than partially. If you are booking Sharm and you want totality, book the onward movement for 1 August and give yourself a spare day.
If you are staying: what to do with the day
Plenty of people will be in Sharm on 2 August 2027 with no realistic way of leaving, and they are going to have a good afternoon anyway. Some ideas that make the most of a 95.55% eclipse.
- Get out on the water. The colour of the Red Sea under a deep partial eclipse is the thing to see: it drains to a hard metallic blue while the sky stays bright. A boat towards Tiran or Ras Mohammed gives you an unbroken horizon and a breeze.
- Do not dive through it. This is the one genuinely bad idea. Underwater you will see a dimming and nothing else, you cannot wear eclipse glasses, and looking up at the surface is unsafe. Dive in the morning, be on deck by 12:30.
- Ras Mohammed National Park. Open desert meeting the sea at the tip of the peninsula, with the mountains of Sinai behind and Africa across the gulf. The best natural amphitheatre in the area and it costs nothing but the park fee.
- Pinhole projection on the sand. A colander, a punched card, or simply the shade of a palm. Hundreds of crescents on pale sand is the photograph you will actually keep.
- Watch the south-west horizon at 13:05. The umbra is passing across the Red Sea in that direction, over the water beyond Hurghada. You are close enough that the sky low in the south-west should darken visibly as it goes by — a consolation prize, but a real one.
The rest of the week
South Sinai earns its reputation. Ras Mohammed and the Straits of Tiran hold some of the healthiest coral in the northern Red Sea; the Thistlegorm, a British cargo ship sunk in 1941 and rediscovered by Cousteau, is one of the great wreck dives anywhere. Inland, St Catherine’s Monastery has been continuously inhabited since the sixth century and holds a library of manuscripts second only to the Vatican’s, at the foot of the mountain of the biblical revelation. The night sky over the Sinai interior, once you are away from the resort lights, is superb — and in the first days of August the Moon is heading for new, so the darkness before the eclipse is as good as it gets.
Weather, heat and the numbers in your favour
If Sharm loses on geography, it wins convincingly on climate. This is one of the driest, sunniest and most reliably cloudless places in the world in August. Rain is close to non-existent, and the odds of a clear sky at 13:05 are about as good as anywhere on the eclipse track outside Upper Egypt itself. Nobody in Sharm is going to be clouded out. They are simply going to be in the wrong place.
The cost is heat. Early-August highs in Sharm commonly reach the high thirties and can pass 40°C, with the Sun at 79° at maximum eclipse and effectively no shade in the open. The northerly wind takes the edge off it and also disguises how fast you are dehydrating.
Standing still for two and three-quarter hours
An eclipse is a long, stationary, outdoor event. Three to four litres of water per person, salts, a wide-brimmed hat, loose long sleeves and shade you can retreat into — a parasol, a gazebo, a vehicle. The temperature drop near maximum is genuine but brief, and it arrives after two hours in the Sun, not before them.
Eye safety, with no exceptions
Sharm never reaches totality, so the rule here is the simplest version of the rule: filters on, the entire time, from 11:41 to 14:24. Only equipment certified to ISO 12312-2 counts. Do not look through binoculars, a camera viewfinder, a dive mask, a phone camera or a telescope without a proper solar filter fitted in front of the optics. Full details on our eye safety page.
Sharm El Sheikh eclipse questions
Does Sharm El Sheikh see totality in 2027?
No. Sharm sees a 95.55% partial eclipse at 13:05:03 local time (EEST, UTC+3). No part of the Sinai peninsula lies inside the path of totality — the path crosses the Red Sea coast well to the south, between Hurghada and Safaga.
What is the easiest way to reach totality from Sharm El Sheikh?
Fly out on 1 August. Sharm has good domestic connections via Cairo to Luxor (6m 20s) and to the mainland Red Sea coast for Marsa Alam (5m 29s). Sleep inside the path rather than trying to travel on eclipse morning.
Is there a ferry from Sharm to Hurghada?
A fast-ferry service across the Gulf of Suez has operated intermittently for many years, but it has been suspended and restarted repeatedly and sailings are weather-dependent. Do not build an eclipse plan around it. If you do use it, cross on 1 August — and remember Hurghada is itself 65 km outside the path, so you still need to drive south on the day.
Would climbing Mount Sinai help?
Not at all. The path of totality is a band on the Earth’s surface roughly 258 km wide; a couple of kilometres of altitude changes your position relative to it by an insignificant amount. If the ground below you is outside the path, so is the summit.
Will the weather be good in Sharm on eclipse day?
Almost certainly. South Sinai in August is among the driest and least cloudy places on Earth, with negligible rainfall. Clear skies are close to a safe bet — which is what makes being outside the path so frustrating here.
Can I watch the eclipse while diving?
No, and it would waste the event. Underwater you see only a general dimming, you cannot wear eclipse glasses, and looking up towards the surface is unsafe. Dive in the morning and be on the boat deck, filters in hand, well before 12:45.
Compare with nearby options
El Quseir
An old Ottoman port that just scrapes inside the northern edge of the path.
Full guide → Total — 5m 29s Red Sea CoastMarsa Alam
Totality over coral reefs — the best resort coast inside the path.
Full guide → 98.5% partial Partial Eclipse ZoneHurghada
Egypt’s biggest Red Sea resort sits just north of the path — but a short drive fixes that.
Full guide →