The Sun will appear highest in the sky above Utah and any place in the Northern Hemisphere on Saturday, June 20th at 3:44 pm MDT, known as the Summer Solstice.
This marks the first day of summer, the longest day and shortest night of the year. At noon the Sun is directly overhead and your shadow is the shortest.
Each day after June 20th the Sun sets farther south until it reaches the Winter solstice at which time it stops and reverses direction setting farther north until the Summer Solstice.
The ancients understood this motion of the Sun. Five-thousand years ago the people of Stonehenge England built a large circle of huge heavy stones that were aligned with the solstice.
In ancient America, the mound builders at the Cahokia in southern Illinois created circles and postholes that were aligned with the sunrise at the solstices.
In the Big Horn Mountains a large circle 90 feet in diameter with eight spokes in astronomical alignment with rising of bright stars and the sun on the solstices.
This astronomical event has been watched and celebrated by cultures throughout the ages.
