Utah 2023
This road trip was to Utah for the October 14, 2023 annular eclipse. Camping near Bluff, Utah for a couple of days with day trips in the area for hiking and exploring ancient ruins.
Annular Solar Eclipse
An annular solar eclipse occurred on October 14, 2023. 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 or miles wide. Occurring only 4.6 days after apogee (Apogee on October 10, 2023), the Moon's apparent diameter was small.
Butler Wash Ruins
Cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloans that represent the full range of living activities: habitation, ceremony, farming, hunting, storage, and tool-making. The viewpoint is just a half-mile hike from the parking lot.
Mule Canyon Ruins
Multiple Ancestral Puebloan sites are located in and around Mule Canyon (just up the highway from Butler Wash Ruins). There is an interesting ruin next to the highway.
Moki Dugway
The Moki Dugway was constructed in 1958 by Texas Zinc, a mining company, to transport uranium ore from the "Happy Jack" mine in Fry Canyon to the processing mill in Mexican Hat. This road section is on Utah State Route 261. It has spectacular views from the Muley Point Overlook to the south. See some pictures in the Picture Gallery.
Four Corners Monument
The Four Corners Monument marks the quadripoint in the Southwestern United States where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. It is the only point in the United States shared by four states, leading to the area being named the Four Corners region. The monument also marks the boundary between two semi-autonomous Native American governments, the Navajo Nation, which maintains the monument as a tourist attraction, and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation.
The composite photo (below) is showing full annularity and the sun before and after full annularity. As seen from Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico, United States. The times of the photos are: 10:29:05, 10:31:38, 10:34:11, 10:36:44 (maximum annularity), 10:39:17, 10,41:50, and 10:44:23. The camera was in a fixed position so the images of the sun show their actual relative position to each other. It was taken by G. Edward Johnson.
