What's New Under The Sun
Prosciutto di Portici Sundial's Owner
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...
Hamilton Dial Dedicated
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...
Frans Maes Received a Royal Decoration
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...
Pros and Cons of Daylight Savings Time
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...
Native American Moon Alignment Ring
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...
Hamilton Dial under Restoration
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,...
Register for the 2025 NASS Conference
Tuesday, 11 February 2025 00:27
We will celebrate our 30th annual NASS Sundial Conference in Ottawa, Ontario 7-10 August 2025. But you need to register by April 15th to get theFull and Partial attendee rates at a discount. We will be staying at Le Germain Hotel Ottawa, 30 Daly Avenue, Ottawa ON Canada. We have a block of rooms at a discount daily room rate of 284 CAD (approx. 216 USD) plus HST and MAT taxes. ...
VSSC Space Museum gets Polar Sundial
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...
Historic Sundials of Andalusia
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....
Shelbyville Sundial
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. ...
Sun Tower Competed
Monday, 04 November 2024 18:38
The Sun Tower's shadow marks the passing of the seasons
credit Jonathan Leijonhufvud
For two years News Atlas (https://newatlas.com/architecture/) has reported on the progress of the construction of the Sun Tower in Yantai, China. The 164-foot (50m) curved conical tower was designed by OPEN Architecture symbolized the watch towers of the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644 CE)...
Hamilton Dial Restoration
Monday, 04 November 2024 17:30
NASS Registered Sundial #1109 at https://sundials.org/index.php/sundial-registry/onedial/1109 is one of a series of bronze sundials presented by Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, dedicated to the memory of the Grand Army of the Republic. Unfortunately the dial in Hamilton, Ohio, suffers from neglect and the gnomon has long been missing.
With support, this dial has been designated...
BSS Sundialist and Webmaster Passes
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Richard Mallet at Cornell Univ. Sundial
Richard Mallet, former British Sundial Society Trustee, Council Member and former BSS Webmaster passed away on Nov 7th, 2016 with funeral held on Dec 12th, 2016. He lived in Eaton Bray, UK and had many interest in physics, mathematics, and sundialing. Those of us maintaining websites know of the difficulty in perserving order, yet always allowing for expansion of new material. "After a near disaster with the [British] Sundial Society's then heavily modified and entirely non-compliant website, Richard stepped in at no charge to the Society to rewrite it using the then new Expression Web software from Microsoft. This proved very successful and was of course fully W3C compliant."
Over the next year, the North American Sundial Society website will migrate from an older version of the Joomla Content Management System to the fully maintainable Joomla 3.x version. The majority of content and organization will remain intact, but new innovations are expected.
Read more about Richard Mallet's life at: http://www.ppowers.com/mallett.htm
Seattle - Sundial Capital of North America
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In the May 14, 2013 edition of The Seattle Times University of Washington professor Woody Sullivan was honored as ‘Mr. Sundial’ for his persistence in declaring Seattle as the Sundial Capital of North America. Dr. Sullivan has worked on more than a dozen dials in Seattle, including the large 20x30 foot vertical dial on southwest wall of the Physics and Astronomy building at UW and the elegant 11x17 foot reflection sundial painted on the ceiling of his garage at N 47° 41.232, W 122° 21.562. A small circular mirror outside the south facing window reflects a spot of light onto the ceiling.
The reflection sundial was a labor of love taking over 3 years to create. Woody marked over 700 locations on the ceiling that allowed him to draw the local solar time, dates, hours of daylight, solar azimuth and altitude, analemma, and even hours to dawn. And being a radio astronomer, he marked the transit sidereal time for two radio sources. The dial was painted with marvelous beauty by a local mural artist, Jim Noonan. The sundial is very personal to Woody, showing time marks for the date he married to the birthdays of himself, his wife, and two daughters. The zodiac painted along the ecliptic has a local touch, representing Pisces by a pair of sockeye; Cancer by a Dungeness crab; and Capricorn as a mountain goat. There is even a compass rose.
Fred Sawyer, president of the North American Sundial Society (NASS) is quoted by Erik Lacitis, Seattle Times staff reporter, saying “it’s likely true that Sullivan’s garage sundial is one of the best in North America.” When the NASS visited Seattle for the 2011 annual sundial conference, they visited Woody’s Reflection Dial and a marker was added to it for the date and time of itsofficial dial dedication held on Saturday 22 August 2011. “We toasted the sundial with an appropriate wine, ‘Wehlener Sonnenuhr’ by Joh. Hos. Prum, the fine Mosel Kabinett from the German vineyard with a large vertical sundial.” said Roger Bailey, the society’s secretary.
Among Dr. Sullivan’s accomplishments in the world of sundials began in the early 1990’s when the University of Washington’s Physics and Astronomy Building was being designed. He suggested a large vertical (southwest declining) sundial. The dial was completed in 1994 and Woody was hooked. He also helped design sundials used on the Mars exploration rovers Sprit and Opportunity that landed ion the Martian surface in 2004. A campaign to build sundials all around our world ensued with the motto “Two Worlds One Sun”. [photos from NASS]
Italian Gnomonist Giacomo Agnelli Dies
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Dear Friends,
A great loss has hit our gnomonic community in Italy. Our friend Giacomo Agnelli died about a week ago. Giacomo was one of the great gnomonists of the past. He had written dozens of articles in engineering and horology, also dealing with mechatronics [mechanical] sundials. He had worked at the European space project, and had frequent ...articles for our magazines [on] gnomonics. He had participated in all meetings of horology in Italy and was known for his satirical cartoons and gnomonic caricatures ...
Marjorie Kelly Webster, Collector of Sundials and Scientific Instrument Passes at 95
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Along with her husband, Mrs. Webster spent much of her life and fortune combing auction catalogs and antiquarian shops to create a collection of early scientific instruments so renowned, it is considered in the same company as the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, according to Bolt, Adler planetarium vice president for collections. The Websters are primarily responsible for the world-class collection of scientific instruments at the Adler.
NASS is supporting the Adler to catalog their sundial collection enhanced over the years by Marjorie Kelly and her husband.
Biography of Gino Schiavone
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Gino Schiavone: After studying Liberal Arts at Loyola University and Fine Arts at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles I began a career of what I called “making wonderful things.” Some thirty years ago I happened upon some books about sundials at a library. This happy accident changed my life. These books introduced me to the wide range of sundials and methods for their design. I was enthralled and inspired; I was in love. I decided to make fine sundials and embarked on a new course of study.
Register for the 2025 NASS Conference
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We will celebrate our 30th annual NASS Sundial Conference in Ottawa, Ontario 7-10 August 2025. But you need to register by April 15th to get theFull and Partial attendee rates at a discount. We will be staying at Le Germain Hotel Ottawa, 30 Daly Avenue, Ottawa ON Canada. We have a block of rooms at a discount daily room rate of 284 CAD (approx. 216 USD) plus HST and MAT taxes. This rate includes a daily hot breakfast buffet (for up to 2 people/room). Indoor valet parking is available for 42CAD per day.
Mark Montgomery and local host Mike Moghadam have been diligently working on planning this conference, gathering at Le Germain Hotel, Ottawa. On Thursday 7 Aug 2025 we open with a reception at the hotel from 4:30-6:30pm including the traditional door prizes. On Friday 8 August we will board a tour bus to visit several sundials ‘in the wild’. We will also stop at the Canada Museum of Science and Technology to see their dials as well as dials from other museums on loan specifically for our visit. Current plans call for us to have lunch at the museum and to have some time to visit its other exhibits. We also expect to stop at the historic Dominion Observatory with its sundial and marker for the prime meridian of Canada. Our last stop will be at the home of Mike and Esther Moghadam to see the new wall dial Mike has built and to enjoy their gracious hospitality.
Saturday 9 August will be filled with a full slate of presentations in the hotel conference room, ending with the announcement of the winner of the 2025 Sawyer Dialing Prize In the evening we will conclude with the conference dinner. On Sunday 10 August we have more speakers and the NASS annual general meeting. The conference will conclude by 1:00pm. Please plan to stay for the entire agenda.
If you have sundials, photos, books, etc. that you would like to display, please let us know so that we can arrange to have some table space available. We will try to allocate ½ table per display. Plan to bring your projects to show. If you would like to give a talk and have not yet contacted Fred, please send an email right away to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. – the schedule is being built now.
Please download the registration and fill it out. Instructions are on the form filling it ou, submitting it by mailing or emailing, and where to send payment. See you there.
 NASS Register Ottawa 2025.pdf | [ ] | 154 kB |
2021 Conference - Philadelphia
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The North American Sundial Society, after by-passing the 2020 Conference due to Covid restrictions, held the 26th annual meeting from August 5th - 8th at the Hilton Garden Inn, Center City, Philadelphia. The venue was similar to past conferences: Thursday night social and door prizes for attendees, Friday a bus tour of 11 sundials in the Philadelphia area, Saturday sundial presentations and annual dinner, finishing on Sunday with more sundial presentations and the annual general meeting (AGM).The dial tour took us walking through Philadelphia parks and arboratums and visits to University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, and Haverford College.
At Swarthmore we saw the modern vertical declining dial on Kohlberg Hall, designed by Martin Cowan. Frederick Orthlieb, professor and chair of the Dept of Engineering at Swarthmore "had a part in locating the bent-plate gnomon so as to give correct indications on the vertical wall. As installed, the gnomon's indicating edge (which lies on a Polar Axis) casts quite a short shadow in Autumn and Winter and requires some observing skill to make a close estimate of indicated time, but in Spring and Summer the longer shadow moves over the granite hour marks very plainly."
For the annual group photo attendees gathered around the "Point Where Things Change", a N-S meridian dial commissioned in 2001 by the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia and designed by Michael Grothusen. The dial is on the grounds of Tasepoint Corporate Headquarters.
From Left to Right: Bill Gottesman, Joyce Robinson, Pam Morris, David Robinson, Bob Kellogg, George Wilson, Jack Aubert, Will Grant, Betsy Wilson, Jim Holland, Bill Thibault, Art Paque, Tish Grant, Fred Sawyer, Philomena Sawyer, Phyllis Montgomery, Jeff Kretsch , Mark Montgomery, Marvin Taylor, Zoon Nguyen, Kate Aubert, Pat O'Hearn, Roger Dignard, Paul Ulbrich.
| 2021_NASS_Conference_Philadelphia.pdf | [ ] | 0 kB |
3D Printing Tutorials
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Look for the new menu tab:3D Printing Tips. Starting this December (2019) NASS begins a series of tutorials using OpenSCAD and other software for designing and printing 3D objects. As you might guess, we'll focus on creating sundials and other shadow casting objects. Download your copy of OpenSCAD at http://www.openscad.org and join our tutorials. If you want even more detail on 3D sundials, join NASS and receive The Compendium with Bill Gottesman, Steve Lelievre, Bob Kellogg and others writing in the regular column "3D Design and Printing Sundials."
Seattle Sundial Tribute
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Professor Woody Sullivan's Reflection Dial
[photo - NASS Conference 2011]
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Professor Woody Sullivan of the University of Washington in Seattle, whose long time motto has been "Seattle, sundial capital of North America", received a tribute from local television station King5 for sundials that he has designed or brought to light around Seattle. His pride and joy is his ceiling reflection dial [photo at left] As related by Joan Kinsey from King5 news, "It took Sullivan and an artist three years to chart hundreds of reflected dots across the top of Sullivan's remodeled garage..." The celestial view includes hour lines, solar declination lines of the equinox and the soltices, and a variety of transit dots that represent special dates and times to the Sullivan family.
Sullivan, a professional astronomer, has helped design a number of Seattle dials. As Joan Kinsey notes, "His first one [a declining vertical dial] went up in 1994 on the side of the astronomy building at the university ...The huge wall sundial ignited Sullivan's passion to make more and research the ones that already exist in town." Woody has created a Sundial Trail of prominent Seattle dials ranging from several vertical dials increasing the educational value at local schools to a large Shepard's dial and an occulus gnomonic dial.
Of course being Seattle, Woody scribed an appropriate sundial motto, "I thrive in the sun, Can't work in the rain. So, if I'm beclouded, please come back again. "
Read about it at: king5 news