What's New Under The Sun
Register Now for NASS 2023 Conference
Monday, 16 January 2023 01:21
The NASS Conference comes early this year. Register now for the 28th annual NASS Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan June 8-11, 2023
KensingtonHotel, Ann Arbor Michigan
Ann Arbor is best known as the home of the sprawling University of Michigan with its architecture, quadrangles, and bustling student life. Yet, it also boasts of great art, science, and archeological...
New Sundial for Kika Silva Pla Planetarium
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...
NASS Dialist Don Snyder Passes
Saturday, 10 December 2022 17:41
Don Snyder, long time NASS member, sundial designer and conference organizer, died Nov. 21, 2022 at the age of 87. He organized two St. Louis conferences for NASS in 2008 and 2017. For the first St. Louis conference, Don worked closely with Michael Olsen of the Missouri Botanical Garden to have five sundials available for viewing, including the dedication of a dial donated by Ron Rinehard, the...
Today - Chicagohenge
Thursday, 22 September 2022 20:41
The date is Sep. 22, 2022, the date of the fall equinox. Although this is supposed to be the day of equal day and night, we know it's not exactly correct. We measure daytime from sunrise to sunset, measured as the first and last light from the sun peaking over the horizon. When we include sunrise and sunset plus atmospheric refration, at mid latitudes daylight wins by about 10...
Indiana French Dial Found
Saturday, 27 August 2022 19:06
Smithsonian Collection - Pocket sundial by Bourgaud of Nantes, 1660–1675. (MA.325565)
From the National Museum of American History is an article about "How did a French pocket sundial end up buried in a field in Indiana?" published 20 July 2022 by Kidwell & Schechner.
It started in 1860 when Dr. Elisha Cannon, while plowing a field in Indiana, came...
2022 - Frans Maes
Tuesday, 23 August 2022 14:17
The 2022 Sawyer Dialing Prize went to Frans Maes "for his creation of an introductory course on dialing, built on the idea of supervised self-study; for his successful multi-year running of that course in Europe; and for his inspiration of NASS’ development of a North American version.”
Fred presented Frans with an award certification, the traditional cash prize of $250 and a custom made...
Interview with Sasch Stephens
Tuesday, 09 August 2022 21:32
What makes a sundial? Practically anything. Sasch Stephens discusses how he became interested in dialing. Since then he has turned many objects into solar time devices. It takes some creative thinking to invision how a common object can become a working sundial. One of the most recent projects turned a 54 x 28 foot south side of a building it into a giant sundial...
World's Smallest Sundial Gets a Lot Smaller
Sunday, 12 June 2022 22:00
Dr. Jeremy Robinson, (Naval Research Laboratory, Electronics Science and Technology Division) combined efforts with his father-in-law, Prof. Woodruff Sullivan (Univ. of Washington Dept. of Astronomy) to construct the World's Smallest Sundial. The competition was sponsored by Cadrans Solaires pour Tous and their record is being entered into the Guiness Book of World...
Guiness Record for Smallest Sundial
Saturday, 28 May 2022 17:28
Perhaps the smallest sundial goes to IBM with the printing of a sundial in a corner of a computer chip. However it lacked a gnomon and could not really tell the time. However, Chen Fong-shean, a Taiwanese miniature craftsman, was challenged by the French astronomical society to beat the Guiness World Record for smallest sundial held by an Italian. The Italian dial created in...
British Sundial Society Founder Christopher Daniel Passes
Wednesday, 25 May 2022 14:42
NASS is saddened to report the passing of one of the UK’s pre-eminent sundial designer, Christopher St. J H Daniel who died on May 17, 2022. His works are to be found all over the UK, ranging from private commissions to major public works and to restorations and reconstruction of old and damaged sundials.
After a 13-year career at sea, Christopher Daniel joined the staff of the National...
Germany Observatory Gets Unusual Paint Over
Thursday, 05 May 2022 15:48
Hochshule KaiserLautern Observatory. HSKL Photo
When is an astronomical observatory not an observatory? When it's playing the roll of R2-D2.
According to Atlas Obscura, "A university in Germany [Hochschule KaisersLautern, University of Applied Scieces Kaiserslautern at the Zweibrücken campus] has transformed its hilltop observatory into the charming likeness...
NASS Member Hal Brandmaier Passes
Friday, 29 April 2022 16:12
NASS is saddened to report that longtime member Harold Brandmaier died on April 11, 2022. Throughout his long life, besides his ever-present sundials, Hal enjoyed stained glass, ship models, photography, travel, folk dance, and playing the hammered dulcimer and hand drums – always in company with his beloved wife Ginny. Hal had been a member since NASS founding and stepped in to help...
al-Shatir Sundial Technology Challenge of 1371
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At 3pm on August 15th Roger Bailey of the North American Sundial Society will hold a public lecture on the historic Ibn al-Shatir sundial at the Great Falls Library in VA. The Analemma Society proposes to recreate the dial’s design, adapted for the latitude of Observatory Park, The Turner Farm, in Great Falls, VA.
Hopefully this will be the second major dial at Observatory Park maintained by the Analemma Society in conjunction with the Fairfax County Park Authority. The first dial was a commemorative dial designed and built by Tony Moss for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, VA.
“High on the minaret of the Great Mosque in Damascus is a remarkable sundial created by Ibn al-Shatir in 1371. Through the 10th to 14th centuries the science of astronomy, timekeeping and sundials had advanced in major Moslem centres like Cairo and Damascus. Based on the developing science of timekeeping, Ibn al-Shatir designed a unique instrument that was a breakthrough…The sundial features equal hours rather than the previous system of dividing the day into 12 hours regardless of the seasonal changes.”
Gardom's Edge Monolith
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Gardom Edge Monolith
[photo courtesy of Dan Brown, Nottingham Trent University]
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A two meter standing stone at Gardom’s Edge may be an astronomically aligned monolith set up during the Neolithic period 2,500 – 1,500 BCE to recognize the summer solstice. According to Dan Brown, Andy Alder and Elizabeth Bemand of Nottingham Trent University, “Such an astronomically aligned stone could be described as a seasonal sundial … However it is not intending to mark local time during a day or measure exact dates during a year. Rather the seasonal shadow casting allows for the display of cosmological knowledge such as the ‘death’ and ‘rebirth’ of the Sun”…
The upward facing north slope of the stone remains in shadow until near the time of Summer solstice. Today the stone points south at an upward tilt of 58.3° +/- 2.9°, seemingly aimed at the highest rise of the summer sun, computed for the Gardom Edge latitude of 53.26° as 60.7° in Neolithic times.
Pantheon Sundial
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One of the most iconic buildings in the world, the Pantheon in Rome is an enduring testament to the power and glory of ancient Rome. At the same time, it has also always posed something of a mystery. The only source of natural lighting is a thirty-foot diameter hole at the very top of the hemispherical dome, often referred to as the "oculus".
Working since 2009, scholars Guilio Magli and Robert Hannah discovered that at midday on the equinoxes, a shaft of circular light shines through the oculus and illuminates the Pantheon's entrance.
Early Astronomers
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![]() [photo credit: Andrew Caswell and
Robert Cockburn of The Daily Telegraph ]
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Ask a person what is the earliest evidence of humans building structures to mark significant celestial events, and one offer "Stonehenge". But there may be a structure built thousands of years early according to some experts in Australia.
A site "down under", name Wurdi Youang, estimated to be older than 10,000 years, has a strange arrangement of stones with alignments toward solstices and equinox that has been scrutinized by several eminent Australian scientists. They conclude that the placement and alignment of the stones is not an accident and there is a perfect alignment with the setting sun on the mid-summer day. Understandably, the exact location of the site is a well-guarded secret, but it is known to be west of Melbourne approximately 80 kilometers.
Indiana French Dial Found
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From the National Museum of American History is an article about "How did a French pocket sundial end up buried in a field in Indiana?" published 20 July 2022 by Kidwell & Schechner.
It started in 1860 when Dr. Elisha Cannon, while plowing a field in Indiana, came across a strange object. It was a French Butterfield sundial. It ended up in the Smithsonian collection 100 years later, where it quietly sat until recently when curator Peggy Kidwell wanted to learn more. She contacted Dr. Sara Schechner, David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University, to join the investigation.
The dial is inscribed "Bourgaud Nantes" showing it was from the workshop of a clockmaker in Nantes, France. As with all Butterfield dials it contained a magnetic compass with declination corrections for orienting the dial to north and a miniature plumb bob to hold the dial level. The gnomon support is in the traditional shape of a bird allowing the gnomon itself to be adjusted to a range of latitudes. Look closely at the chapter ring of hour marks in Roman numerals. Outside the numerals is one hour line scale and on the inside of the numerals is a second scale. The user could approximate the time between these two scales, done for the extreme latitudes 30 and 55 degrees.
"In her research on sundials in the American colonies, Schechner has drawn attention to several of these dials, and notes that some 18th-century French sundial makers, like Pierre le Maire (and his son of the same name), made pocket dials that carefully listed the latitude of places of French interest in both North and South America." How did the dial end up in Indiana? It could have been carried there by Dr. Cannon and his wife Gulielma, Quakers who in 1840 left North Carolina, finding that "living in a state where African Americans were legally enslaved was intorable." Or the dial may have been left a century earlier when the French occupied much of what is now Indiana, leaving outposts such as Terre Haute and possibly a lost sundial.
Read the article: https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/pocket-sundial
Hudson Valley's Missing Sundial
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This article is reproduced by permission from Hudson Valley on-line magazine of Feb 17,2021 and can accessed directly at https://hvmag.com/life-style/history/missing-sundial-hudson-valley-hillside-dean-sage/ It was written by Jonathan Ortiz with information from NASS/BSS member Martin Jenkins and fellow researcher Kevin Franklin.
Menands’ village historian dives headfirst into the past to discover the whereabouts of a sundial that once resided at the Hillside estate in Albany County. There’s a mystery to solve in the Hudson Valley. It involves a cast of unlikely players: a local historian, a British society, a wealthy Albany County businessman, and a famed Scottish novelist.
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The object of their attention? A missing sundial. Its last known whereabouts are the estate of Dean Sage, in Albany County’s village of Menands, which lies inside the Town of Colonie; however, this conundrum begins much, much farther away — in Scotland, to be exact.
“It’s a trans-Atlantic mystery,” says Kevin Franklin, Menands’ village historian and a former Menands police officer.
In 2020, Franklin was contacted by Martin and Janet Jenkins, two members of the British Sundial Society. They sought information about Hillside, the former Albany County estate of Dean Sage, son of Henry W. Sage of famed lumber firm H.W. Sage Co. fame. Hillside is located on the north side of the Menand Road (now State Rt. 378).
Interestingly enough, their purpose in finding this sundial makes the story ever more complicated. The device once located in Menands is actually a replica of another sundial from the Abbottsford estate of famed Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott. Now, there stands only a pedestal upon which the original sundial once sat.
“It is not known what the Scott sundial looked like,” writes Martin Jenkins in a letter to Franklin. “If the replica sundial made for Hillside could be traced, then a replacement replica could be made for Abbotsford in Scotland, the pillar then no longer standing silent and unadorned.”
Several books make reference to both the original sundial and the replica. Most recently the March 2019 edition of the British Sundial Society Bulletin by Denis Cowan refers to the fact that a replica sundial was made for “Hillside, Menands, NY.” The 1902 edition of Sun-Dials and Roses of Yesterday by Alice Morse Earle shows the replica sundial to be in existence at Hillside, in the Shakespeare Garden border. In Ye Sundial Booke by T. Geoffrey W. Henslow in 1914, there are two sketches, one showing the sundial pillar at Abbotsford, Scotland, and the other depicting the replica sundial at Hillside.
Lastly, in The Book of Sun-Dials, the author Margaret Gatty apparently made her sketch of the sundial pillar at Abbotsford in 1839, but, by then, the sundial was missing — more than likely stolen.
Despite extensive documentation, many questions remain. What was the connection between Sir Walter Scott and Hillside? Who commissioned the Hillside replica? And, most importantly, what happened to the replica?
It was here that Franklin picked up the trail, starting with the local angle: Dean Sage.
“The Sages were immensely wealthy,” explains Franklin. “Their wealth evolved around the exporting of lumber from the Michigan area across the Erie Canal to the ‘Lumber District’ of Albany.”
Researching Sage’s background did reveal one important fact, and the potential connection between him and Scott: Sage was both a bibliophile and an avid fisherman.
Replica of Sir Walter’s Sundial | Photo by Alice Morse Earle, public domain |
He wrote the famous fly fishing book Ristigouche and Its Salmon Fishing in 1888. It was published by David Douglas of Edinburgh, whose name also appears in Sun-Dials and Roses of Yesterday. There, it is stated that Sage’s replica sundial was, “commissioned by the publisher Douglas.”
Douglas has another publisher’s credit — in The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. Scott kept a daily journal from 1827 until his death in 1832. These journals were published in 1890 by the very same Douglas who published for Sage.
While Sage, born in 1841, could never have met Scott, who died in 1832, it is well known that Abbotsford is on the banks of the River Tweed and has been famous for salmon fishing since Roman times. The Tweed Commissioners whose responsibility it was to manage the river and its fish was set up by Scott in 1805. It seems likely that Dean Sage visited Abbotsford at some time as part of his salmon fishing interest.
“It would not be beyond the realm of imagination for Dean Sage to have gotten either a sketch or drawing, maybe even a photograph, of this sundial at least the base that still remains at the Abbottsford and had that duplicated,” explains Franklin.
The final question remains: Where is the Hillside sundial?
Mr. Franklin continues to follow up with past residents of the area and any leads which would help locate the missing sundial of Hillside.
Have any info on the missing Hillside sundial? Send any information or clues to this local mystery to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or directly to Kevin Franklin at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
[You may also send any information to the North American Sundial Society, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ]
Virtual Tour of Jantar Mantar Solar Observatory
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Google Arts and Culture offers you to take a virtual tour of the 13th century observatory Jantar Mantar in Delhi. At the opening view (see the website link below), the Google tour explains: "Innovations in architectural astronomy: The Jantar Mantar Obervatory, Delhi's outdoor astronomical observatory is the earliest of five observatories built by Sawai Jai Singh II across India. It is dominated by a huge sundial and houses other innovative instruments that help plot the course of heavenly bodies...."
"The Maharaja designed four similar observatories in Jaipur, Ujjain, Mathura and Varanasi to help and improve upon the studies of space and time. The Jantar Mantar in Jaipur is now the largest among them." Google gives us a glipse of the large equatorial dial of the Man Singh Observatory in Varanasi and then focuses on the four large brick and plaster instruments at Jantar Mantar: the Ram yantra, two circular structures next to each other used to observe celestial objects; the Samrat yantra, one of the largest equatorial dials in the world with stairs leading to the top of the triangular gnomon (looking like stairs to the heavens) and surrounded by a large equatorial band to measure solar time; the Jai Prakash yantra that consist of two elaborate sunken hemispheres so large that there are stairs from the bottom leading between huge longitudinal bands; and the Misra yantra, which is shaped like a heart and is composed of five different sun and alignment instruments to determine the shortest and longest days of the year at the solstices.
Take a personal visit to these historic astronomical and solar instruments at: The Jantar Mantar Observatory - Google Arts & Culture
Harvard Collection of Diptych Sundials
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From the Harvard Gazette - Dec 9, 2019 : "Since 1672 Harvard University has been acquiring scientific instruments for teaching and research. In 1948 the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments was established...[and has] grown to more than 20,000 objects making it one of the three largest university collections of its kind in the world"
As an illustration of the collection is a photograph of ivory pocket sundials shown here, made in Nuremberg, Germany between 1575 and 1645. These elegant diptych sundials represented the 16th and 17th century equivalent of pocket watches, especially for wealthy traveling merchants to keep track of time. "Harvard has the largest collection of sundials in North America, a gift of David P. Wheatland, Class of 1922."
As described by Dr. Sara Schechner in Time of Our Lives - Sundials of the Adler Planetarium who is the David P. Wheatland Curator of Historical Instruments at Harvard describes the diptych as "fashioned from ivory, gilt brass, carved wood, and wood covered by printed paper. The materials offer hints on the social status of their owners. So too do common and novel accessories found on the instruments. A directory of cities and their latitudes suggests an owner who traveled... The association is stronger when the diptych combines a gazetteer with particular sundials that found the time according to the sundry conventions of England, France, Germany, and Italy. A merchant crossing a border would have needed to know how to set up an appointment with his clients. How many hours would there be to transact business or to journey along the road? Calendrical devices on the diptych showed him the length of the day and night throughout the year...[and] the diptych's lunar volvelle gave ...the moon's phase. It also assisted the owner in finding the time by moonlight...[And] a diptych with a magnetic compass [allowed proper and immediate orienting the sundial]."
Read more at: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/12/collection-of-historical-scientific-instruments-continues-to-amaze/
Mystery of 1733 Sundial
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It started simply enough. Keith, a "treasure hunter" reported finding a 1733 sundial "in the Carolinas". (http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/my-best-finds/603181-1733-colonial-sundial-found-restored.html). The brass sundial about 5 or 6 inches in size was found crumpled and apparently had a number of modern attempts to solder a gnomon back onto the dial plate. Kieth reported, "When I found the piece it had been bent and damaged so I sent it to an expert in restoring metal objects....It has been the best find of my relic hunting career. I hope to get some detailed info from people who know about sundials."
The dial is done in the English style of the period, that is to say, the dial is cut as an octogon with a circular chapter ring with Roman numerals and delineated on the outside to the quarter hour. In the center is an 8-point compass rose with the cardinal points labelled "N,S,E,W". Four crude and somewhat modern screw holes held the dial to some modern base. The maker's initials D.D.M. are berlow the engraving of the original owner "Walter * Lane" with the date 1733.
As Kieth notes, "[The dial] is one of the earliest from southern colonial America". But the problem is where? The engraved latitude is "Latt: 34:30". Using Serle's ruler confirms that the delineated hour lines are between 34 and 35 degrees. That should allow a quick check of southern cities to identify the home of this dial. The center of population in the 1750's was Willmington, NC at 34:14. If we assume that William Lane was a farmer a person of means, then two possibilities arise: Blenheim SC and Laurens SC both at 34:30. Laurens County, in particular, was in the area where thousands of immigrants, mainly Scottish and Irish, settled in the pre-revolution Carolinas. Then there is Kershaw SC at 34:32 which was settled around 1732 by English traders and farmers who moved inland from Charleston. What was the provinance of this dial? We may never know, but you can search the below 1755 map from University of North Carolina library of historic maps for towns and river portsat: https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/123
NEW INFORMATION:
A descendent of Walter Lane sent the following: Walter Lane lived in New Bern, Craven County, North Carolina. Apparently he left Maryland in the 1720's and by 1726 showed up in records of Craven County. In 1729 he was listed as a Commisioner of New Bern, and probably a person of means. The sundial could very possibly be his. Looking at the map below, New Bern is just north of latitude 35 degrees on the mouth of the Neus [Neuse] river. If we accept the latitude of the dial as 34:30, Walter lived about 35 miles south of New Bern, perhaps on a farm near Wilmington, S.C. Old records show that much of South Carolina in 1734 was considered Craven County.
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