What's New Under The Sun
Canadian Sundial Coin
Thursday, 10 October 2024 17:56Photo of the Canadian $20 Silver Coin with the reverse as a Sundial. Photo courtesy of the Royal Canadian Mint. Sundial design by Anna Bucciarelli. The Canadian Royal Mint will release a fully functioning sundial coin expected to ship on 12 December, 2024. The obverse is a profile of His Majesty, Charles III (designed by Steve Rosati) and the reverse is a...
NASS Sundial Class
Monday, 07 October 2024 03:03Once again NASS presents Elements of Dialing, a twelve week course covering the basics of sundials, led by Steve Lelievre. The course covers basic principles of how sundials work, calculations involved in designing sundials, types of time (systems of time measurement), and some of the history of sundials.The course is intended for people who are new to sundialing and who wish to learn some of...
Ancient Egyptian Clock
Tuesday, 24 September 2024 16:47Dario Radley reports in Archaelogical News Online Magazine (Aug 24, 2024) that an ancient observatory from the 6th century BCE was found by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities at Tell El-Fara'in archaeological site. “It highlights the advanced astronomical knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, including their ability to determine the solar calendar and significant religious and...
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...
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...
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...
Texas Christian University Gets New Dial
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Example of an Andrewes Longitude Sundial |
Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth Texas will unveil a new longitude sundial on May 5th, 2015. As William Andrewes, creator of the longitude dial explains, "The Longitude Dial is based on an idea proposed in 1607 by Franz Ritter of Nuremburg...Ritter devised and published a world map projected from Nuremburg, with its lines of longitude arrayed to serve also as hour lines. However, the difficulties of creating a new project for each location and the expense of producing it in durable materials were considerable. Ritter's gnomonic projection map does not appear to have been developed for use in sundials - until now." See Andrewes website at: http://www.longitudedial.com/index.html
One of Andrewes sundials will be unveiled in front of Walsh Performing Arts Center, situated in the middle of a circular stone plaza. Andrewes monumental sundial prices start at $50,000. Read more at TCU-360 news
As an interesting side note, the gnomonic project map upon which Andrewes creates his sundials was extensively used during World War II and into the 1950's by high frequency (HF) direction finding (DF) sites. On the gnomonic map not only are lines of longitude straight, but any great circle line of bearing is straight as well. Using a pin on the DF site, the lines of bearing could be drawn with an extended piece of string. Computer calculations eventually replaced the manual direction finding and geolocation method.
World's Greatest Sundial?
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Of the 101 things that play in Peoria, the Pekin Illinois Sundial in Mineral Springs Park is rated #59, and billed as the World's greatest sundial in Pekin, Illinois. Even Google Maps marks the Pekin Sundial. The Pekin Park District says: "picturesquely located in the Sunken Gardens in Mineral Springs Park, this unique sundial tells the hours before or after noon and the highest point of the sun on a given day. More interesting information is available on the earth, sun, planets and latitude and longitude at the site."
The Peroria Journal Star interviewed Hentry Cakora, now 79, who built the dial using his family business, Tazewell Machine Parts and convinced the Pekin Park District to provide land for its construction in the Sunken Gardens of Mineral Springs Park. It's easy to spot on Google Maps just south of Court Street near the park's Lagoon that from spring through fall offers a pedalboat rides.
Cakora who knew about the sun's motion and was good at mathematics created a complex set of sundials. The main sundial is a horizontal dial about 6 feet tall of burnished steel, surrounded by hour marks on the ground. But if you're there near noontime there are extra treats. At the base of the sundial is a thin upright triangle split down the middle allowing it to cast a narrow beam of light toward the noon mark. Then there is a pole just north of the dial with two flat nodi about 12 inches in diameter, each having a hole in the center. The lower nodus casts a shadow that each hour falls on an analemma that allows correction for the sun's irregular "Equation of Time". Charts explain this to the observer as well. The upper nodus casts its shadow on a noon mark analemma, with small stakes to indicate the soltices and equinox.
Nearby is a planet. Is it part of a planet trail that starts from the Park's nearby fountain? Or is there another astronomical explanation? In any event, if the Pekin dial isn't one of the World's greatest, Cakora declares “I’m sure, by far, it’s the most accurate."
Read about it in the Peoria Journal Star: http://101.pjstar.com/59-worlds-greatest-sundial/ and see at: http://www.pekinparkdistrict.org/sundial.html
2015 - IYL Words and Light
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I would like to send you the direct link to more details on this competition, as I believe it may be of interest for some members of the NASS (I saw the Art and Literature section in the "Teachers Corner"). The deadline for submitting entries is coming soon - 31 March:
“Words and Light” is a tribute to all the writers who were inspired by Light, writers who were interested in the Science of Light, and scientists who were also poets. The Competition is dedicated to Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, celebrating the publication of the grammar book by Lomonosov written in 1755 which reformed the Russian literary language by combining Old Church Slavonic with the vernacular (160th anniversary in 2015), and to the book "Theory of Colours" (Zur Farbenlehre) by Goethe, published in 1810, which contains detailed descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration (205th anniversary in 2015).
Yours sincerely,
Ana Luisa
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Dr. Ana Luisa Simoes Gamboa
Associate Professor, Department of Industrial Ecology
ITMO University (Saint Petersburg National Research
University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics)
Saint Petersburg, Russia
+7 911 716 37 22
2015 - International Year of Light
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SOLART2 by artist MA2F |
UNESCO has declared 2015 the International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies (IYL-2015). For sundialists, the inauguration of SOLART2 on the June 2015 solstice may be the highlight. SOLART2 is the largest IYL-2015 artistic sundial project in Europe. It is located in Rivesaltes at the northern entrance of Perpignan, France. It was initiated in 2013 as a strong symbol of sustainable development. Artist MA2F (Marc-Andre 2 Figuères) is constructing the sundial with an incredibly large gnomon created from a double metal bar with numbers silouhettes cut into the structure. The dial is meant to illustrate the flow of matter and energy, projecting a continually changing shadow of numbers onto the dial face during the progression of solar time. The edges of the gnomon are painted red "as a visual value and mastery of light". You can see a video of the dial at: http://ma2f.com/pages/solart2.php
Amelia Peabody Sundial
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Amelia Peabody Sundial - Dover Town Library
photo: Maureen Sullivan (Wicked Local Dover)
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Although Amelia Peabody died in 1984, her legacy and interest in sundials continues. In 1920 she moved to Dover, Delaware, and began raising thoroughbred horses. Ultimately she purchased more than 800 acres in Dover, becoming its largest land owner. She built three houses on her Powisset Farm, three other houses on other properties, and another called the Sun House at 145 Powisset St. in Dover.
As Eleanor Tedesco reports in the Wicked Local Dover on-line news, “The Sun House reflected her interest in heat generated by the power of the sun and was the first of its kind in New England. But the house failed to reach its goal of heating the building with the sun’s heat.” But true to its name, a graceful sundial in the shape of a Nautilus shell decorated her yard.
Westminster Dial with Analemma
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Westminster Dial with Analemma Casting Mirror on Top
Photo Credit: Robert Clark
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How do you get the people of your town interested in astronomy? Robert (Bob) L. Clark a retired professor of mathematics and computer science and member of the Westminster Astronomical Society had the obvious answer: Build a unique sundial.
In the grassy field next to Hoffman’s Ice Cream in Westminster, the Westminster Astronomical Society dedicated a simple horizontal dial attached to a pole with a unique “ornament” … a vertical south facing mirror.
Renaissance Dial - It's Academic
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Telling Time with Precision
(By Permission - Bill Gottesman)
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The Andalusia Star News reports that the Lurleen B. Wallace (LBW) Community College in Andalusia, Alabama, has a new timepiece that President Herb Riedel says, “… is a device used for practical purposes to keep time, but they also take on a symbolic meeting. For a college campus, I thought it would be very appropriate because it combines science and art.”
Indeed, the sundial is a large helical sundial, a modern “Renaissance” sundial designed by Bill Gottesman of Precision Sundials in Vermont.
Four Minutes Til Sunset
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Eight years ago the University of Western Australia (UWA) commissioned a talented graduate, artist Shaun Tan, to create an impressionistic sundial for the 100th anniversary of UWA. The fundamentals of the west-facing sundial were delineated by UWA Professor Peter Kovesi of the Geophysics and Image Analysis Group.
What Shaun artistically designed based on Professor Kovesi’s hour lines was carefully photographed, scanned and reproduced as a pixilated map that was turned into 337,600 glass chips (tessera) by artisan tiler Iain H. Middleton from V-vo Architectural Mosaics, with Ankit Gakhar, Darren Hay and Brody Osborne. The mosaic suppliers Bisazza from Vicenza, Italy selected the colored glass to give Shaun Tan’s brilliance as well as accuracy. They prepared 375 squares each containing 900 individual tessera and shipped them from Vicenza to Perth. In all, UWA states that “To create the background, place the tiles, clean and detail, grout and polish has taken approximately 560 man-hours.”
The 4.56×8.0 m. sundial was unveiled in January 2013, mounted with precision on a west wall of the University Club building located on the UWA campus in Crawley, Perth. A star-shaped gnomon with an open annulus casts a spot of time on the wall. During the course of the afternoon, the spot moves from the bottom of the wall to the top, recording Italian Hours until sunset, a common and practical way of measuring time used since the Arabic sundial of al-Shatir in 1371. The final sunset line is a race between the gnomon shadow and a shadow from a further western building. Watch the time-lapse video created by Nic Montagu to see which shadow wins the race. The dial marks the annual limits of the sun’s shadow at the solstices (summer on the left hand and winter on the right hand side) and a middle line for the equinoxes.
Read the full details at: http://hourstosunset.com/
Bainbridge Island Equatorial Sundial
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The Battle Point Astronomical Association, founded in 1992, provides astronomical observing for science education and public enjoyment at Ritchie Observatory and Planetarium in Battle Point Park on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
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