An annular solar eclipse will occur at the Moon's descending node of orbit on Wednesday, May 21, 2031, with a magnitude of 0.9589. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide. Occurring about 3.8 days before apogee (on May 25, 2031, at 3:10 UTC), the Moon's apparent diameter will be smaller.

Annularity will be visible from parts of Angola, Zambia, the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo, northern Malawi, Tanzania, southern India, northern Sri Lanka, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, southern Thailand, Malaysia, and much of Indonesia. A partial eclipse will be visible for much of Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australia.

Animated path

Shown below are two tables displaying details about this particular solar eclipse. The first table outlines times at which the Moon's penumbra or umbra attains the specific parameter, and the second table describes various other parameters pertaining to this eclipse.

Even those stars and planets bright enough to be visible during a total solar eclipse are in most cases not visible during an annular eclipse. The best candidate for naked-eye sighting is Venus, although it will be many degrees east of the Sun and therefore below the eastern horizon for morning observers in Africa. In southern India it will be well up in the east but at a lower altitude than the Sun. Venus will be best seen in those areas such as Malaysia and Indonesia where the eclipse peaks near sunset; it will be high in the west.

If any star is spotted during the eclipse it will be Sirius, which will be high in the east-southeast for observers in India and high in the west-southwest for observers in the East Indies.

This eclipse is part of an eclipse season, a period, roughly every six months, when eclipses occur. Only two (or occasionally three) eclipse seasons occur each year, and each season lasts about 35 days and repeats just short of six months (173 days) later; thus two full eclipse seasons always occur each year. Either two or three eclipses happen each eclipse season. In the sequence below, each eclipse is separated by a fortnight. The first and last eclipse in this sequence is separated by one synodic month.

This eclipse is a member of a semester series. An eclipse in a semester series of solar eclipses repeats approximately every 177 days and 4 hours (a semester) at alternating nodes of the Moon's orbit.