What's New Under The Sun
Getty Research Institute on the Solstice
Saturday, 22 June 2024 19:38Off Interstate 405 in the hills of Los Angeles is the Getty Research Institute, part of the campus of The Getty Center. The Center houses the free Getty Museum, the Getty Library, Getty Research Institute, Getty Foundation, and Getty Conservation Institute. The Getty Research Institute opened its doors to the public in December of 1997, where besides the thousands of books, art collections,...
Preparing for the Solar Eclipse of April 8th 2024
Sunday, 24 March 2024 18:30There 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...
Seiko Designs Equatorial Sundial Watch
Sunday, 24 March 2024 01:42When 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...
Rare Astrolabe Discovered by Chance in Verona Museum
Wednesday, 06 March 2024 00:17Dr. 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...
NASS 2024 Conference to be held in Vancouver, BC June 20-23
Friday, 23 February 2024 17:42The 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...
World Sundial Day
Friday, 23 February 2024 16:53Spanish 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...
NASS Course "Elements of Dialing" Starts Jan 6, 2024
Saturday, 18 November 2023 18:21NASS 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...
Smithsonian Photo Contest - Jaipur Sundial
Sunday, 05 November 2023 16:30Smithsonian 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...
Houston Pavilion - World's Largest Sundial
Friday, 14 July 2023 23:08A 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...
Sun Tower Update
Saturday, 01 July 2023 00:36According 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...
Point of Infinity Hyperbolic Monument in San Francisco
Sunday, 25 June 2023 22:17Julie 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...
Ice Sculpture Ephemeral in Time
Thursday, 30 March 2023 00:03In 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...
Carmichael's Monumental Sundial
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[photo courtesy of John Carmichael]
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In 2002, the North American Sundial Society recognized John Carmichael with the Sawyer Dialing Prize as an eminent artisan who creates a wide variety of sundials, principally in stone and glass. In recognition, John received a small brass equatorial sundial made by the renowned British artisan Tony Moss. But for nearly a decade the sundial remained on John's workbench never seeing the full light of day.
Recently Mr. Carmichael completed a 24:1-scale model railroad in his back yard (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlcarmichael/sets/72157632430552837/with/8348506244/). Now his Sawyer Dialing Prize sundial finally sits in the Arizona sun as a miniature "Monumental Sundial" at the Trolley Station. At the 24:1 scale, the 3-inch dial assumes the proportion of a large 6-foot equatorial sundial. You can see John Carmichael's dials at http://www.sundialsculptures.com/.
Wilkesboro Quilt Dial
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[photoCourtesy of the Wilkes Journal-Patriot]
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Some sundial artisans and their work are instantly recognizable. Back in 2010 on the wall of the Yancey Times Journal building in Burnsville, North Carolina, astronomer Bob Hampton and artist Martin Weaver created the Quilt Block Sundial, an 8x8 foot vertical dial colorfully painted by volunteers from the Quilt Trails of North Carolina.
Sundials of Downton Abbey
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[photo courtesy of John Foad]
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Many have been following the Prime time Emmy Award winning series Downton Abbey on PBS. This British World War I period drama was filmed on location at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, which represents the fictional Downton Abbey. Many outdoor scenes were filmed in the village of Bampton, Oxfordshire. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downton_Abbey )
As you follow the lives of aristocrats and servants in this acclaimed series, keep an eye out for sundials. Attached is a photo noticed by NASS member John Foad. Want to search for yourself? Look for the dial in front of the hospital. The complete set of the series can be found on Amazon and Shop PBS.
And while you're at it, look for sundials in Foyle's War, Midsomer Murders, and Father Brown. You'll be surprise how many sundials you will find.
Granite Sundial at Penn State
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On September 22, 2011 Penn State University dedicated a massive granite sundial donated by trustee and alumnus Joel Myers. Designed and sculptured by artist Mark Mennin, it is installed in the university's arboretum. At the dedication Myers said, "We wanted to create something unique...The sundial is to be a destination". Though still lacking a few final touches, such as a bit of polishing, the large granite dial is functional and tells time to the nearest minute.
Heliodome
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[photo credit: Vincent Kessler]
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A three dimensional sundial house? You can find it at 10 rue du Diebach, Cosswiller near Strasbourg in the countryside of Alsace in France. Eric Wasser has created the "Heliodome", a tilted circular building aligned with the earth's polar axis that is a far cry from the old Buckminister Fuller "Bucky Domes".
The house has a glassed southern exposure to allow sunlight during the winter, but from the equatorial belt forward the house has a nearly conventional roof providing shade during the summer. As Wasser explains on his website, "The passive solar house is an architectural volume, a Heliodome, determined by the diurnal and annual trajectory of the sun." Read more about the details at http://www.heliodome.com/equipe.html.
Sundial Glass
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[photo courtesy of
Jackie Jones]
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All right mate, have a pint of golden sun. You can pick up a sundial beer glass designed by Jackie Jones for 51o North at The Greys Pub in Southover Street Brighton, or if you're out of the country, the dial will work in Banff, Canada, the European cities of Calais, Brussels, and Dresden, and in Kazahstan or other points of equal latitude
The sundial glass motto? “Campaigning for real time”. The sundial glass is a sun altitude type of dial using a frosted ring on one side of the glass to cast a spot of light onto the far side of the glass, calibrated with hour lines for the date of year. Not a bad way to contemplate the time while having a sip. You can get your own sundial glass at http://sundialglass.wordpress.com/
It Looks Like a Sundial - But Is It?
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Thanks to Andy Robertson
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Recent examination of our Sundial Registry revealed dials that no longer exist and have been replaced with something else that might resemble a sundial, but isn't. Consider the brief entry of Dial 56 that may have once existed in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 9 Mimosa Road:
500 Foot Tall Gnomon Project
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While using Google Maps, some artists living in the UK became unusual dialists when it occurred to them that the shadow cast by a skyscraper could be used as the gnomon of a really tall sundial.
The forty-seven story Beetham Tower in Manchester is 554 feet tall and dominates the city's skyline. So it occurred to Annie Harrison, Jude Macpherson and Jacqueline Wylie to use the shadow cast by this structure to chart the progress of the sun as part of an art project.
Oro Valley Sundial
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Its not often a sundial is also a monumental piece of sculpture weighing tons, but that is what developer Fred Steiniger installed this May at the Innovation Corporate Center in Oro Valley, Arizona. Long-time NASS member and professional dialist John Carmichael was intimately involved with the 3-year long project, which is still ongoing. Carmichael still has to install a noon-line sundial. Project completion is sometime this year before the planned dedication slated for noon at Autumnal Equinox.
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