UpToWhereWhere exactly should you stand?
Every picture worth keeping from the last eclipse was the Sun behind something: a skater mid-trick, a rider on a ridge, a crescent dropping into the sea. All of them were planned, months ahead, by someone solving the same small geometry problem. This does it for you. Drop yourself anywhere on the path and see the real skyline, where the Sun crosses it, and whether anything is in the way. Then pick something to put the eclipse behind, and get the places to stand, each with the exact second.
Put the eclipse behind something
Positions and times come from this eclipse’s Besselian elements, computed in your browser for the exact point you picked. Ground heights come from public 30 m elevation data, so treat the last few metres as an estimate and the trees and buildings as your own problem.
You do not need a mountain
On level ground the distance is simply the height of the thing divided by the tangent of the Sun’s altitude. At totality over the Strait that works out at 1.3 times its height: 77 metres from a 60 metre tower, 250 from a small hill. A phone can take that picture. What needs real terrain is making the Sun look big next to something small, and this page finds the terrain for you.
Everything is computed here, now
Positions and times come from this eclipse’s Besselian elements, run in your browser for the exact point you pick, not read off a grid. Ground heights are read live from public 30 metre elevation data, which is also how the skyline and the obstruction warnings are drawn.
The moment is the answer
The Sun climbs from 25 to 53 degrees across the eclipse, so almost any subject lines up at some instant. The tool tells you when. Totality is the default target because that is the picture nobody else will have, but a deep crescent behind a ridge is its own kind of good and the timeline lets you take it.
Questions
How do I photograph the 2027 eclipse behind a landmark?
Stand so the landmark is exactly between you and the Sun, at a distance equal to its height divided by the tangent of the Sun’s altitude at that moment. This page does the arithmetic and the terrain check: choose your spot, choose the landmark, and it returns the places on the ground where the alignment actually happens, the second it happens, and the focal length that frames it.
Where will the Sun be during the 2027 eclipse?
It depends on where you are, and this page computes it for your point. Along the Strait of Gibraltar totality happens with the Sun about 38 degrees above the horizon, almost due east. Over Upper Egypt the same eclipse happens with the Sun above 80 degrees, close to overhead, which is why an alignment there means standing close to something tall and looking steeply up.
Can I get a photo with a giant Sun behind a person?
Yes, but it is the demanding version. The Sun looks about 2 per cent of a subject’s height at the flat-ground distance, so to make it big you must stand much further back, and to stay aligned from further back you must stand lower. For a person and a Sun of the same apparent height you need roughly 200 metres of distance and 90 to 150 metres of drop, depending on the moment you choose. That is a real cliff or a real hillside, and the tool searches the terrain around your subject for one.
Does terrain block the eclipse in 2027?
Almost nowhere, unlike 2026. The Sun is high on the whole path, so an obstacle would have to rise hundreds of metres per kilometre to matter. The skyline on this page is still drawn from real elevation data, because at first contact the Sun is only 25 degrees up in the west of the path, and because a close ridge or a building can still take that from you.