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...
Fischer Dial Dedicated in New Milford, CT
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[photo courtesy of volunteers at the McCarthy Observatory ]
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On Saturday, June 9th 2012, the volunteers of the John J. McCarthy Observatory in New Milford, CT, dedicated a 9-foot stainless steel sundial as the centerpiece of “Galileo’s Garden” adjacent to the John J. McCarthy Observatory. The sundial was built and dedicated in memory of Kathleen Fischer, a sixth-grade science teacher who inspired many students to pursue science.
The sundial is an open armillary, with an adjustable hour band for standard and daylight time. At the tip of the gnomon is a bronze and brass true-size rendering of Galileo’s first telescope, honoring the 400 years since Galileo explored the heavens. The North American Sundial Society was privileged to donate to this effort.
Hampton to Build 9/11 Memorial Sundial
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Todd Petty reported in the Hunterdon County Democrat that Tom Carpenter, a member of Fire Company 13 for forty-three years, presented plans to the city council for a 9/11 memorial in Veteran’s Park located in Hampton Borough, New Jersey.
The park has memorials honoring local veterans from The Great War to those of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the twin tower collapse of 9/11 Tom Carpenter recalled, “Thank God we didn’t have anyone from Hampton Borough, but Lebanon and Bethlehem did. We did respond to Ground Zero within hours …and spent two days there. Hampton does have a direct connection [to 9/11] and we’re proud of it.”
September 11th Remembrance
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September 11th is a time of remembrance. At Freedom High School in Woodbridge, Virginia stands a large sundial dedicated in 2004 with four inlaid plaques. The plaques are arranged on the ground such that the gnomon shadow tip falls on them at 8:45, 9:03, 9:37 and 10:07 AM, the times of the four air crashes. Near the sundial is a low, black granite panel commemorating the citizens of Prince William County that lost their lives on September 11th, and the names of those citizen are on bricks surrounding the sundial.
Two Worlds - One Beginning
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Everyone is excited about the landing of Perseverance, the Mars rover. If you look closely at the first panorama of the Martian landscape you will see on the equipment bay of Perseverance the Mastcam color calibration target. It sort of looks like it could be a sundial. In 2004 a similar calibration target was used as the first Martian sundial, designed by Dr. Woody Sullivan and Jim Bell with the support of The Planetary Society and Bill Nye, "The Science Guy" [See PDF at bottom]. Is the Mastcam color calibration target a sundial as well? Here is Dr. Sullivan's answer to a group of sundial enthusiasts (2/25/2021):
"The short answer is “No”. The longer answer follows. The new object on Perseverance (officially the "photometry calibration target") has obvious similarities to the Mars dials on Spirit and Opportunity that landed in 2004, and in fact it is a technological and aesthetic “grand-daughter” 17 years later. (The intervening generation is the Curiosity rover, which landed in 2013 and is still alive). The Mars dials that a small group of us designed and fabricated and then occasionally “used” to read Martian time were a great experience for me.
"But after over a decade of Spirit and Opportunity, I decided not to get involved in any future NASA missions — they gobble up a lot of time! The science and fabrication of the new calibration target (as for Curiosity) is led by a group at U. of Copenhagen.
"Nobody has ever done anything with the orientation of the shadows cast by the “gnomon” on Curiosity and I’m sure nobody will for Perseverance either. By the way, independent of gnomonics, the vertical tube has a vital scientific purpose: its shadow on the gray and colored patches allows one to calibrate camera images properly in shadow as well as sunlight.
"The various symbolism and messages on Perseverance also stem directly as heritage from Spirit and Opportunity . You can find a tremendous amount of detail about all aspects of the Perseverance cal target (including construction) at https://mastcamz.asu.edu/mars-in-full-color/ [See PDF at bottom]. The feature I like best is the motto “Two Worlds, One Beginning”, which nicely refers to Spirit and Opportunity ’s “Two Worlds, One Sun” as well as early solar system history and the possibility of early life on Mars. (Curiosity has the terrible motto “To Mars to Explore”.)
"Nevertheless, I watch the procession of missions with great astrobiology interest. And someday I will write up the whole Mars dial experience, including many Martian landscape images in which it appears, and how a student and I were actually able, using its shadow, to measure the Martian analemma at local mean (“clock”) noon over a Martian year ( = 1.9 Earth years).
— Woody Sullivan
Prof. (Emeritus) Woodruff T. Sullivan, III
Dept. of Astronomy & Astrobiology Program Box 351580
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195 USA
Planetary Society Brings Back Earth Dial
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The Planetary Society and Bill Nye, The Science Guy, are bringing back the Earth Dial, which is a simple to make gnomonic horizontal sundial reminiscent of the sundial incorporated into the Mars rovers Spirit, Opportunity and now Curiosity. Their original and fundamental purpose is to serve as test patterns for the rover cameras, but they also provide an opportunity as unique shadow casting sundials.
“Since we had shadows being cast on Mars, I suggested it be a sundial… I admit I was quite enthusiastic about it. Steve Squyres, the Principle Investigator on the Spirit and Opportunity missions, made the call, and the Mars Dials were created. He received the [Planetary] Society’s Cosmos medal a few years ago, for his wonderful leadership of the project.”
The Earth Dial project was started in 2004 and now, nearly a decade later, is being brought back. Visit the Planetary Society website Planetary Society - Earth Dial for details and download the attachment below to construct your own Earth Dial.
TED Lecture - Sundials to Mars
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Bill Nye, The Science Guy gives a 7 minute TED-ED talk describing the excitement of creating sundials on Mars. http://ed.ted.com/lessons/sending-a-sundial-to-mars-bill-nye
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, a nonprofit organization devoted to spreading ideas of worth. Conferences are held each year with more than 50 guest speakers to motivate the audience on many different fields and now through YouTube, you can share the excitement of sundialing.
Curiosity Carries Sundial
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With the successful landing of the NASA rover Curiosity, another sundial is on planet Mars. Turning the color calibration target into a sundial was the idea of Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and Professor Woodruff Sullivan at the University of Washington, originally hailed by “Two Worlds – One Sun”
THese two sundial enthusiasits have been encouraging people around the world to make their own sundials and collectively participate using webcams to tell solar time around the earth. See: http://sundials.org/index.php/features/168-curiosity-sundial-launched and read the details of the sundial with the following PDF download: MarsDialReport.pdf
Curiosity’s calibration target was created by Tyler Nordgren at the University of Redlands. However Nordgren and a group of six scientists, astronomers, educators, and artists (including Nye and Sullivan) went further. Said Nordgren, "But we thought, why not use this very dry boring technical piece of equipment, and turn it into something beautiful and evocative?"
The calibration target turned sundial is actually a leftover from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit. Along the edges of the sundial MARS is written out in 16 different languages. The sundial’s center represents the sun with a concentric grey ring for the earth’s nearly circular orbit and a displaced white ring for Mars eccentric orbit. The positions of Earth and Mars, shown respectively by a blue and red dot are placed for the date of impact at 10:32 pm Aug 5th PDT. Every MARS sundial has a date and motto. “It's sundial tradition,” says Nordgren. Curiosity says "MARS 2012" and "TO MARS TO EXPLORE."
Each home-plate color slice has a phrase describing what the mission means for human exploration. It reads:
“For millennia, Mars has stimulated our imaginations. First we saw Mars as a wandering red star, a bringer of war from the abode of the gods. In recent centuries, the planet's changing appearance in telescopes caused us to think that Mars had a climate like the Earth's. Our first space age views revealed only a cratered, Moon-like world, but later missions showed that Mars once had abundant liquid water. Through it all, we have wondered: Has there been life on Mars? To those taking the next steps to find out, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery."
Dr. Woody Sullivan discussed the history of the Mars Dials on a recent Sundial Digest forum (11 Aug 2012, Vol. 80, Issue 8) https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
“[Above] is the first image of the latest "Mars Dial", which indeed is the calibration device for the main camera ("Mastcam") on Curiosity Rover, which landed safely in Gale Crater on Mars 5 days ago (hurrah!)."
"The Mars Dials were originally fabricated in 1999 for the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004, and the latter of which is STILL working over 8 years later. To date over 35,000 images have been taken of the two Mars Dials - the most photographed thing on Mars! As mentioned below, I was intimately involved in all aspects of making these calibration devices into working sundials - design, fabrication, operations, etc. However, because of other commitments I chose not to be part of any Curiosity efforts, so my report in the following paragraph is that of a (very) interested observer."
"In order to save some money, the Curiosity Mars Dial is a slight modification of one of the 6 copies that we made in 1999. A couple of magnets were added (to try to repel dust), new plates were put on it to change various wording such as the date and, in particular, the motto. The motto is now "To Mars To Explore" rather than the previous "Two Worlds One Sun". But the biggest difference is that, as far as I know, no one is ever going to superimpose the hour/date lines so that it can actually be used as a sundial! And yet NASA's publicity continues to call it a sundial.....But I'm still very happy to see the first images of it….”
The image here is from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit (look carefully for the motto “Two Worlds One Sun”) and according to a NASA news release, “was processed by students in the Red Rover Goes to Mars program to impose hour markings on the face of the dial. The position of the shadow of the sundial's post within the markings indicates the time of day and the season, which in this image is 12:17 p.m. local solar time, late summer. A team of 16 students from 12 countries were selected by the Planetary Society to participate in this program. This image was taken on Mars by the rover's panoramic camera.” [Image was produced at Cornell University - Image Nr: PIA05017]
For more details of the Curiosity sundial, read an interview with Tyler Nordgren: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-08/mars-rover-curiosity and http://wtvr.com/2012/08/03/nasa-mars-rover-curiosity-will-land-early-monday/
Read more about Curiosity’s instruments at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/main/index.html
Curiosity Sundial Launched
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![]() [photo courtesy of NASA]
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The spacecraft was launched toward Mars on 26 Nov 2011. Onboard Curiosity the camera calibration sundial has four edges each containing a panel of text and image, written by Jim Bell, planetary scientist from Arizona State University and the Mars Exploration Rover team with graphics designed by artist Jon Lomberg.
The digital camera and calibration target was created by Tyler Nordgren from the University of Redlands and a group of six scientists, astronomers, educators and artists worked together to create a digital camera that is calibrated to photograph the climate on Mars. On the team was Bill Nye and Professor Sullivan.
Dr. Bell now executive Director of the Planetary Society and Lomberg were both on the team that designed the similar sundials for the the Spirit and Opportunity Martian rovers. Artist Jon Lomberg has a long history in spacecraft graphics, starting with Design Director for NASA’s Voyager Golden Record and a long-time collaborator of Carl Sagan. He won an Emmy Award for his work as Chief Artist of the TV series COSMOS. Read more at http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/news/ci_19476230 and http://citizenofthegalaxy.com/wordpress/?p=169
ENEA Solar Compass Soon to be Smartphone App
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The National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) is an Italian Government sponsored research and development agency. In 2017 Sara Bollanti and her team at ENEA in Frascati developed a solar compass that "is 100 times more precise than magnetic compasses..." with applications for surveying, civil engineering, and for us, sundial alignment. The heart of the device is a combination of GPS receiver for determining both time and geographic position and a solar collector consisting of a narrow slit and a CMOS image detector. Essentially this is an electronic solar azimuth compass. A smallArduino computer uses the UTC time plus geographic coordinates to compute the local sun azimuth and then compares it to the position of the sun's projection of a slit on a CMOS detector. According to ENEA, the "...electronic solar compass is compact, completely automatic, cheap, and reaches an accuracy better than 1 arcmin. The latter is one of the best currently available values, comparable to those achievable by means of much more expensive and sophisticated devices, like coupled GPS systems (see for example U.S. patent 5,617,317A, 1997) or gyrocompasses. Furthermore, the ENEA compass provides the orientation in a few seconds, a time extremely shorter than that necessary for gyrocompasses."
By 2018 this was tested in Antarctica and now the mathematics has been reduced to fit into your smart phone. In April 2020 the ENEA team announced the developed the smartphone app i called "SunPass". It is currently in beta testing and will soon be available at the Play Store. In basic form, the app allows you to acquire the sun azimuth by pointing toward the shadow of a vertical object such as a building ("shadow method") or the shadow of a vertical pole ("gnomon method"). A more accurate appraoch is to construct a box with a slit on the front and hole on top such that the smartphone can observe the illuminated sun line on the floor of the box ("Slit method"). For the advanced, one can construct a precision holder from a kit that mounts on a tripod.
ENEA's goal of a low cost, simple method of precision alignment is now accessible to all. This new technology implements the mathematics of determining the sun's azimuth in elegant ways. But of course it only works on sunny days.
Read more at:
http://eai.enea.it/archivio/anno-2017/astana-italy/the-enea-solar-compass-how-to-catch-more-sun-by-using-the-sun
And watch the video:
https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/11352/1135216/Accurate-and-low-cost-ENEA-solar-compass-for-precision-metrology/10.1117/12.2555747.full?SSO=1
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