Fred Espenak

Road Atlas for the Annular Solar Eclipse of 2023 - Black & White Edition Fred Espenak

On Saturday, October 14, 2023, an annular eclipse of the Sun will be visible from parts of the United States. Although a partial eclipse will be seen from all of North America, the annular phase in which the Moon's disk is completely silhouetted by the Sun (known as annularity) is only visible from a narrow path of the Moon's antumbral shadow as it sweeps through the western USA (Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas), Mexico, Central and South America.

The Road Atlas for the Annular Solar Eclipse of 2023 contains a comprehensive series of 29 maps of the path of annularity across the USA, Mexico, Central and South America. The large scale (1 inch = 28 miles) shows both major and minor roads, towns and cities, rivers, lakes, parks, national forests, wilderness areas and mountain ranges.

The path of annularity on each map is depicted as a lightly shaded region with the northern and southern limits clearly identified. The "ring of fire" annular phase can only be seen inside this path. The closer one gets to the central line of the path, the longer the annular eclipse lasts. Gray lines inside the path mark the duration of the annular eclipse in 30 second steps. This makes it easy to estimate the duration of annularity from any location in the eclipse path.

Armed with this atlas and the latest weather forecasts, the road warrior is ready to chase annularity no matter where it takes him/her along the entire path. This mobile strategy offers the highest probability of witnessing the amazing 2023 annular eclipse in clear skies.