What's New Under The Sun

Monday, 15 September 2025 19:42

NASS is pleased to announce the upcoming fifth instance of Elements of Dialing, our introductory course about sundials, their history, and the science that makes them work. The free 12-lesson course, intended for those are new to sundialing, runs from 27 October 2025 until 26 April 2026. The course instructor is Robert Kellogg, NASS Vice President and Sundial Registrar.  Bob will be...

Thursday, 11 September 2025 23:11

A Hungarian born American scientist, Mária Telkes (1900-1995), was called "The Sun Queen" and among other honors, was postmousthly inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. She lived to 95 and for most of her life developed solar power in a variety of forms. Trained as a biophysicist, she worked for Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company in Pittsburgh, PA, where she...

Thursday, 28 August 2025 23:25

The annual NASS Conference was held 7-10 August, 2025 in Ottawa.  As usual, the conference began late Thursday afternoon with an introduction social and a "grab bag give away", taking your chances with tickets to win the bag's prize.  Will Grant was the final winner of the Walton Double Planar Polar Sundial, but Paul Ulbrich beat the statistic odds and won this prize three times,...

Tuesday, 10 June 2025 18:51

  Prosciutto di Portici (Ham) Sundial Photo: Getty Images The Prosciutto di Portici Sundial, more often called the Portici Ham Sundial, dates from the first century somewhere between  8 BCE to 79 CE.  This small silvered bronze dial was uncovered on 11 June, 1755 in the ruins of Herculaneum (current day Portici) in the "Villa of the Papyri", buried in...

Friday, 06 June 2025 21:01

  Sundial dedication May 31, 2025.  At left is Kathleen Stuckey Fox, with the City Proclamation presented by Mayor Pat Moeller and City Council on-lookers Carla Fiehrer and Susan Vaughn offering congratulations. On May 31, 2025 at 1pm, the Hamilton, Ohio, sundial (NASS Sundial Registry #1109) was re-dedicated in Monument Park. Originally dedicated in 1941 to the...

Monday, 24 March 2025 21:33

Several years ago Frans decided to write the course on sundials that included self assessment questions to force students not only to read the text, but to internalize the concepts. And a final submittal question "not necessarily a difficult question, but: no answer, no new lesson." Thus Frans Maes began writing lessons and sending them out to students. NASS has now used his material to create...

Monday, 24 March 2025 15:37

In a 24 March 2025 article from the on-line Science Advisor (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Phie Jacobs summarizes the "great debate" of the yearly shift from standard time to daylight savings time.  In January 2025 the US Senate introduced the Sunshine Protection Act to permanently have daylight savings time year round. Certainly 54% of Americans do not like the...

Friday, 21 March 2025 19:26

Perhaps the most famous alignment circle in the United States is the Cahokia Woodhenge near St. Louis constructed between 700-1400 CE by Cahokia Indigenous native Americans. But there were an estimated 10,000 other earthen mounds that once were scatter across the mid-west.. In an article from Atlas Obscura (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/octagon-earthworks-ohio) by Olivia Young on March...

Friday, 21 March 2025 18:37

The Hamilton dial is in the restorative care of Jarrett and Celene Hawkins (Hawkins & Hawkins Custom, LLC in Cincinnati Ohio https://www.studio-hawkins.com/) in preparation for the dial's dedication on Saturday, May 31, 2025. The face of the Hamilton Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) sundial has been cleaned and bead-blasted showing the dial as it was cast 84 years ago. In the process,...

Tuesday, 17 December 2024 23:47

In November 2024, a team consisting of members from SPL, TTDG and CMD of VSSC successfully designed and installed an accurate and fully functional sundial at the Rocket Garden of VSSC Space Museum, Thumba (8.53°N, 76.86°E). Following a space theme, the vertical gnomon is a 3-stage rocket that casts its daily and seasonal shadow on a dial face 1 1/2 meters by 1 meter.  The the sundial face...

Saturday, 16 November 2024 00:07

Esteban Martínez Almirón has published a new book Historical Sundials: Forgotten Andalusian Treasures (Relojes de Sol Históricos Tesoros Andaluces Olvidados) In it he reviews over 400 sundials from the Andalucian region of southern Spain Originally to celebrate the 25th year of the website https://relojandalusi.org/ Esteban Martínez Almirón began showing his sundial drawings on the site....

Wednesday, 13 November 2024 19:36

It isn't often that a sundial face is created before the gnomon is attached.  In Shelbyville IN a large, circular art piece in the form of a sundial, was created at the Blue River Trailhead early in 2024.  If they had chosen an analemmatic sundial, a walker of the trail could have simply stood on the appropriate date and used his or her own shadow to tell the local solar time. ...

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With all due respects to Shakespeare, time will always be with us, and signifies quite a lot. The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is organizing a symposium dedicated to Time and Culture to be held 5-9 June 2016 at Harvard's Northwest Lab.  According to the symposium organizers:

"The symposium aims to set the stage for future timekeeping standards, infrastructure, and engineering best practices for astronomers and the broader society. At the same time the program will be cognizant of the rich history from Harrison's chronometer to today's atomic clocks and pulsar observations. The theoreticians and engineers of time will be brought together with the educators and historians of science, enriching the understanding of time among both experts and the public."

The definition of the second has changed several times over the last 40 years and likely will change again before the end of this decade. Should timekeeping be decoupled from the rotation of the earth?  We already abstract time with zone time (such as Eastern Standard Time) and minipulate it to fit our activities (using Eastern Daylight Saving Time).  We no longer worry about the moment of sunrise or sunset, rather that we go to work at 9:00AM or have a class that lasts from 10:00-10:50AM.  Indeed, "ante and post meridian" may be obsolete.  

"The future of timekeeping is evolving with the development of optical frequency standars, the consideration of high-order relativistic effects, and the challenges of distributing trusted timescales at even higher preicision....A closer look at time in astronomy and other sciences, as a defining element of modern civilization, is needed."  Read more and register for the symposium at: http://timesymposium.org

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Greenwich Globe - Alisa Goikhman

Alisa Goikhman has put into art  a sculpture called the Greenwich Globe.  What started as a simple idea of dividing Canada and the US into time into time zones 15o wide (one hour steps), today's meridian boundaries create a complicated map.  Goikhman projects this map onto a globe with the ragged ridges of each time zone, sequentially enlarging the meridians using the proportions of an Archimedes spiral.

Goikhman explains: " The Greenwich Globe's shape was generated by an algorithm that treated time as physical matter.  Each additional hour is represented through a constant degree of elevation and a 15o angle bend.  The elevation based map projections gives easy-to-read shape to the complex man-made system of time-zones.  It also operates as a sundial, a play on the now familiar row of world time clocks.  The shadow it casts on a wall is meant to be read as a world watch.  Each spike in the shadow shows the local time at a corresponding geographical region."

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nass_news_2013_jul_History_of_the_Sky.jpg

Kevin Murphy, artist and photographer, set up a time-lapse camera on the roof of the San Francisco Exploratorium to record the sky every 10 seconds, 24 hours per day for an entire year. The camera points due north at and elevation of 45 degrees, which means that you won’t see any dramatic sunrise or sunset, nor will you see a burning image of the sun. Even with the wide-angle lens, the sun is always kept just out of view. But what a wonderful view of the sky: Look closely at the video and you’ll see moving clouds, fog, rain, and differing colors of the sky.

Most stunning is the changing length of the day. Summer morning twilight begins about 4:10am (Pacific Standard Time) and evening twilight ends about 8:10pm, but you must be patient for the winter sky to appear. Winter morning twilight begins about 6:50am (PST) and evening twilight ends about 5:30pm. (There’s a small running clock in the bottom right corner to chart your progress). You’ll see the dramatic difference between summer and winter with days in darkness patiently waiting their turn at sunrise and conversely, the fast quenching of the blue sky into darkness well before the summer frames show any sign of paling.

Each frame is digitally photographed at 1024x768 pixels, that with compression, requires about half a terabyte storage per year. Kevin Murphy has been creative with the sky display: Thumbnail videos of each day of the year are collectively represented in a tiled mosaic 20 days wide by 18 days tall, showing 360 days of sky all at once. The images are arranged chronologically, and are synchronized by time of day, beginning before summer sunrise. Time is compressed in playback at 24 frames/second so that each second represents 4 minutes of time.

This is still a work still in progress: As the camera on the Exploratorium roof continues to collect images of the sky, they will be integrated into the daily montage. Therefore the video will vary from day to day, always displaying the most recent 365 days.

Visit http://www.murphlab.com/hsky/ for more information. Below is his video. It’s best played in full-screen HD resolution. Click the middle arrow to start, then click the bottom right frame box.

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nass_news_2012_aug_FlemingSundialsA new sundial project called “Meantime in Greenwich” opened on “Dingle Day” August 6th in Sir Sandford Fleming Park (affectionately known as “Dingle Park”) located in the Halifax Regional Municipality of  Nova Scotia.   Media artist David Clark created a series of 24 horizontal sundials that surround the Memorial (Dingle) Tower, a site that once had been Fleming's summer home.  Visitors to the public exhibit can download a free app onto their phone or iPad and hear an audio story when they approach each sundial.  For iPhone users, aiming its camera at the sundial triggers a 3D object to appear on the screen.  As Clark describes it, “Each sundial becomes a pedestal for virtual reality.  Everybody becomes their own cinema.”

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NASA has taken outstanding video of the June 6th 2012 transit of Venus.  Images were recorded by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory Satellite that records the sun's surface and corona at a number of visible light and ultraviolet wavelengths. [See sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov]   These images showing the 2012 transit of Venus were recorded at a wavelength of 171 Angstroms (AIA 171) (Extreme Ultraviolet).  This channel is especially good at showing coronal loops - the arcs extending off of the Sun where plasma moves along magnetic field lines. The brightest spots seen here are locations where the magnetic field near the surface is exceptionally strong.  

NASA video source and images may be found at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010900/a010996/index.html

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Don’t miss the Solar Eclipse this Sunday, May 20th.  Times of the eclipse can be found at http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OHtables/OH2012-Tab02.pdf

For those of you in the San Francisco – San Mateo California area, Bill Gottesman, NASS dialist, has created an “eclipse clock”, a new type of paper sundial made specifically for the partial solar. You need a simple pin-hole projector (a card with a small hole in it) to cast a shadow of the eclipsed sun.  The angle of the moon’s shadow tells accurate time (at least for San Mateo California). Bill will discuss how he made this dial at the NASS Sundial Conference in Asheville this August.  Come find out how he did it.

Attachments:
Download this file (Eclipse_Sundial_2012.pdf)Eclipse_Sundial_2012.pdf[ ]714 kB

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nass_news_2011_dec_UWashSundial

Want to watch a sundial in action?  Professor Woodruff Sullivan and Ian Smith at the University of Washington in Seattle have just launched an active webcam of the University’s large vertical declining sundial on the side of the Physics and Astronomy building.   The webcam image is updated once per minute day and night. “we know that some of you will want to stare at it for hours on end (or at least bookmark it….”

Their website has many features including the first two time-lapse movies of the giant sundial showing the all-day shadow on the summer solstice and on the autumn equinox. More time lapse videos will be presented during the months that come.  In the near future they will improve the present camera with higher-resolution and greater reliability.

A flurry of sundial webcams existed in 2004-05 when the EarthDial Project, the invention of Bill Nye and Woody Sullivan, was run under the auspices of The Planetary Society. The Project, with a motto Two Worlds, One Sun was run in conjunction with the MarsDial Project, which involved the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, each of which landed on Mars in 2004 with a small calibration target turned into a Mars sundial on its deck. People around the world were urged to build sundials of a standard design and display them to the world using a webcam. Click Here to See Time Lapse Movies of Some of These Dials.  A new Mars sundial will arrive red at the red planet next August onboard Curiosity.

Take a look at the new webcam at http://sunny.astro.washington.edu

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 nass news 2025 may hamilton dial dedication 1

Sundial dedication May 31, 2025.  At left is Kathleen Stuckey Fox, with the City Proclamation presented by Mayor Pat Moeller and City Council on-lookers Carla Fiehrer and Susan Vaughn offering congratulations.

On May 31, 2025 at 1pm, the Hamilton, Ohio, sundial (NASS Sundial Registry #1109) was re-dedicated in Monument Park. Originally dedicated in 1941 to the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) near the shores of the Great Miami River by the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, the sundial faced 84 years of weathering, vandalism, and neglect, leaving it in a sad state. 

Hamilton native and historian, Kathleen Stuckey Fox, stepped in to restore the dial and surrounding area of Monument Park, leading an engraved brick campaign to raise 10,000 dollars.The effort was supported by the citizens of Hamilton, Butler County Histrorical Society, the Hamilton Garden Club and the NASS who contributed 1500 dollars, which as Kathleen Stuckey Fox said, "to save one of their childrren."

Philanthropists James K. Fitton and the W.E. Smith Family Charitable Trust provided substantial support.  At the end, 19,200 dollars were raised and 140 engraved bricks to surround the dial were purchased and donated. The sundial restoration and crafting of a new sundial gnomon was done under the care and expertise of Hawkins and Hawkings, LLC of Cincinnati (https://www.studio-hawkins.com/).  They gave the bronze base and dial a warm brown patina with bight bronze pedestal legs.  The dial stans proudly on an octagonal grey granite base engraved "May 31, 2025."

During the Sundial Dedication at Monument Park, Hamilton Mayor, Pat Moeller and City Coucil presented a Proclamation thanking Kathleen Stuckey Fox, urging “all citizens to recognize and show appreciation to Kathleen and the work she has accomplished to preserve the City of Hamilton’s history.”  Mark Montgomery, representing the NASS, concluded his remarks with, “Many of the Grand Army of the Republic sundials across the country were established with great fanfare.  No less today for the GAR sundial here in Hamilton.  Enjoy this moment in time and may the sundial last another 100 years.”

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nass news 2025 mar hamilton dial restorationThe Hamilton dial is in the restorative care of Jarrett and Celene Hawkins (Hawkins & Hawkins Custom, LLC in Cincinnati Ohio https://www.studio-hawkins.com/) in preparation for the dial's dedication on Saturday, May 31, 2025.

The face of the Hamilton Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) sundial has been cleaned and bead-blasted showing the dial as it was cast 84 years ago. In the process, Hawkins & Hawkins discovered a plate attached to the edge of the bottom half of the dial with the name "Newman Bros. Inc Cincinnati Ohio" The foundry most likely cast other GAR dials of similar design. Newman Brothers, Inc. began operation in 1882, providing cast iron and bronze hardware and continued into the 1950's creating "architectural and ornamental metal work in aluminum, bronze, nickel, silver and stainless steel" before closing their doors.

The restoraion is intended to leave the dial and four-post dial pedestal with minimum change to the original surfaces. What has worked well on other bronze dials is a light brown patina, leaving the top of the hour lines, marks, and lettering in a bright bronze finish.     

A total of $19,200 for the dial's restoration was raised through donations and selling 140 engraved bricks that will be along a pathway leading to the dial. The path is being designed by Adam Cornette, Director of the Hamilton Parks Conservancy and his team. The engraved polished granite hexagon for the dial base is in Cincinnati, waiting to be delivered. The 140 engraved bricks are in safekeeping at a Hamilton storage facility. Everything has been arranged for the dedication on May 31, 2025, at 1:00pm at Monument Park in Hamilton.  Mark Montgomery of the North American Sundial Society is slated to be one of the eight guest speakers. Following the dedication, a reception follows in the beautiful Soldiers, Sailors, and Pioneers Monument, dedicated on July 4, 1906.

Photos courtesy of Hawkins & Hawkins

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