What's New Under The Sun

Sunday, 24 March 2024 18:30

There are lots of maps showing where to go for the April 8th 2024 total solar eclipse and others showing the statistical chance of clouds such as https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/02/22/april-eclipse-clouds/  From Little Rock Arkansas to the Mazatlan coast there is a high probability of clear weather.  The cities from Indianapolis through Cleveland OH, Rochester and Syracuse...

Sunday, 24 March 2024 01:42

When is a watch not a watch? When it unfolds into an equatorial sundial.  The watch, designed by Yu Ishihara is called a "Watch Exclusively for Sunny Men" and was part of a contest sponsored by Seiko to "help reimagine what a watch can be", aimed at creativity and perhaps for eventual production. Read about it at...

Wednesday, 06 March 2024 00:17

  Dr. Federica Gigante, from Cambridge Univerity's History Faculty, discovered a rare astrolabe sequestered in a museum at Verona, Italy.  Publishing in Nuncius (1 March 2024) Dr. Gigante presents "a hitherto unknown remarkable astrolabe from Al-Andalus which likely belonged to the collection of Ludovico Moscardo (1611–1681) assembled in Verona in the seventeenth century. The...

Friday, 23 February 2024 17:42

The North American Sundial Society (NASS) will hold its 2024 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from Thrursday June 20th to Sunday June 23rd.  The conference will  be held at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, 900 West Georgia Street, Vancouver BC.  The conference will start Thursday afternoon with a traditional reception and sundial door prizes.  Friday will be a...

Friday, 23 February 2024 16:53

Spanish sundialist Esteban Martínez has launched the resolution to establish the World Sundial Day to occur each year on the Spring Equinox.  According to the petition circulated by Martinez, "Reason  Sundials represent the union of disciplines as disparate as Astronomy, Mathematics, [and] Geography...They have an undoubted didactic value in teaching astronomy to young people and as...

Saturday, 18 November 2023 18:21

NASS is pleased to announce the upcoming third instance of Elements of Dialing, our introductory course about sundials, their history, and the science that makes them work. The free 13-lesson course, intended for those are new to sundialing, runs from January 2024. The course coordinator will be Steve Lelievre, our Secretary and editor of The Compendium. Steve will be assisted from time to time...

Sunday, 05 November 2023 16:30

Smithsonian Magazine holds a photo-of-the-day contest. Winner on 30 Oct 2023 was Harita Sistu who took a photo of the large sundial of Jantar Mantar, Jaipur India (taken in July 2022). Harita notes: "I wanted to try my best to capture just how massive the instrument is and bring focus into the incredible skill that went into designing and constructing it." See other NASS...

Friday, 14 July 2023 23:08

A sundial or performance center or solar generator? It's all three. Called the Arco del Tiempo (Arch of Time), the design by Berlin architect Riccardo Mariano provides the projection of the sun's rays onto the ground through tinted glass apertures spanning the length of its arching ceiling. The elliptical shaped spots change every hour, telling "the solar time each day and delight visitors with...

Saturday, 01 July 2023 00:36

According to NewAtlas.com (https://newatlas.com/architecture/sun-tower-open/), construction of the Sun Tower exhibition building and outdoor theater is underway in the Chinese city of Yantai. The tower is being constructed by a French firm, Ducks Sceno and the engineering firm Arup, raising to 50m (164 ft) gracefully into the sky.  The tower symbolizes the historic watch towers of...

Sunday, 25 June 2023 22:17

Julie Baumgardner in The Art Newspaper of Jan 13, 2023 reports on the construction project of Point of Infinity, a nearly 70 foot (21m) hyperbolic cone will reach toward the sky as part of a 50 million dollar park development on Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island. In a competition held by the San Francisco Arts Commision on behalf of the Treasure Island Development Authority, Hiroshi...

Thursday, 30 March 2023 00:03

In the Swiss mountains near the resort of Zermatt just beneath the Matternhorn, Stir World reports that "famed luxury Swiss watchmaker Hublot announced Daniel Arsham as its new ambassador, with a compelling piece of temporary land art. Aptly titled "Light & Time", the work is a Hublot-inspired 20-metre sundial resting in the shadows of the Matterhorn mountain." This sculptural is billed as...

Sunday, 18 December 2022 23:00

Sklar Bixby and Jeremy Meel, students at Santa Fe College in Florida took on a project to design and 3D-print a new sundial for the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium in Gainesville Florida (located on Santa Fe's Northwest Campus). Under the guidance of Dr. Philip Pinon, Sklar and Jeremy took on a semester long project as part of the Exploring Honors Mathematics class. They designed a horizontal sundial...

 Our current NASS Officers are:

President

Vice President

Society Matters
Frederick W. Sawyer III
27 Ninas Way - Hampton Run
Manchester CT 06040-6388
email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Membership concerns, Committees
Robert L. Kellogg
10629 Rock Run Drive
Potomac, MD 20854-1701
email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
 

Secretary

Treasurer

General contacts
Steve Lelievre
307-2211 Shelbourne Street
Victoria, BC V8R 4K9 Canada
email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Financial matters, Currency
Mark Montgomery
311 Water Tower Drive
Chesterton, IN 46304-2654
email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

Each year two of the four NASS officers are up for election and NASS members may propose candidates by writing to the Nominating Committee by July 1st.  If the slate of candidates is uncontested, the Nominating Committee announces the result, traditionally done at the Annual General meeting held during the NASS Sundial Conference in the late summer of each year.  If there are multiple candidates for a given office,  then the election is done by mail to all members.

NASS Committee Chairman

Compendium Editor

NASS Dial Registrar

Webmaster

Steve Lelievre
4-7059 Ash Crescent
Vancouver, BC V6P 3K6 Canada
email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Robert L. Kellogg
10629 Rock Run Drive
Potomac, MD 20854-1701
email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Robert L. Kellogg
10629 Rock Run Drive
Potomac, MD 20854-1701
email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

At the 2004 General Meeting it was resolved that the Society should seek to expand membership participation in the Society's leadership for the present and to prepare for the future. Therefore we are looking for volunteers to participate in the following committees:

Standing Committees identified in the Bylaws that invite participation are:

Membership Committee: [chaired by the Vice President, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ].The Membership Committee works on ways to obtain new members and seeks to support the existing membership in a variety of ways. This committee promotes the society and its goals through various means.

Sundial Documentation Committee: This committee is responsible for recording sundials of historic or other interest in North America, and obtaining or preparing a file on each. NASS enters and maintains a record of these dials in a publicly available database called the NASS Sundial Registry. As such, the chairman of the Sundial Documentation Committee is the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. responsible for all forms of the Sundial Registry, including on-line versions at the NASS website. Both the Sundial Documentation Committee and the NASS website committee encourage all NASS members and the public at large to submit sundial sightings of interesting dials, public and private. Most registered sundials are publicly owned and are publicly accessible; NASS does register appropriate sundials located on private property in the Registry but requires dial-owner permission to show these private sundials on the web.

Editorial Committee: [chaired by Editor, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.]. This committee supports Steve Lelievre, Compendium editor, in soliciting, writing and editing material for our quarterly journal and in preparing the journal for publication and distribution. All NASS members are encouraged to submit articles on their experiences with sundials and sundial projects, articles on local sundials, sundial history, or sundial theory. The chairman is responsible for editing The Compendium, quarterly journal of the NASS.  The committee under chairman direction, solicits, identifies, or otherwise obtains articles or materials for publication. The committee is called upon to assist in editing material for NASS Compendium and other publications.

Nominating Committee: [chair appointed by NASS President]. A committee of no fewer than three members is convened annually. This Committee solicits nominations for officers and directors, and considers volunteers willing to fill vacancies on the Board of Directors.  Current nominating committee chairman is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The President of the society from time to time forms additional committees and appoints chairpersons. The following committees need your support:

Internet Web Site Committee: [chaired by Webmaster, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.]. The NASS Website is where our society meets the world through the Internet. Popular resources are our unique Register of North American sundials and our links page. The website has recently upgraded to a Content Management System (CMS) for article management and display of our Sundial Registry. Volunteers to maintain the site are always welcome.

Education Committee: [chair is open]. The Education Committee works to develop NASS dialing presentation material and media, supports sundial training and workshops, and provides educational material for teachers and students consistent with school curricula.

Conference Planning Committee: [chaired by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.]. This committee, whose membership may well vary from year to year, works on site selection, planning and hosting of the NASS annual conference.

If you are interested in contributing to the present and future of NASS by volunteering to work on one of these committees, please contact the Membership Committee Chairman, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  Bob will inform the committee chairperson of your interest and you will be contacted to discuss how you can help NASS further grow as a vibrant organization.

NASS is your Society. Participate!