What's New Under The Sun
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...
Canadian Sundial Coin
Thursday, 10 October 2024 17:56
Photo 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 03:03
Once 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 16:47
Dario 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 19:38
Off 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 18:30
There 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 01:42
When 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...
Greenwich Globe
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Goikhman explains: " The Greenwich Globe's shape was generated by an algorithm that treated time as physical matter. Each additional hour is represented through a constant degree of elevation and a 15o angle bend. The elevation based map projections gives easy-to-read shape to the complex man-made system of time-zones. It also operates as a sundial, a play on the now familiar row of world time clocks. The shadow it casts on a wall is meant to be read as a world watch. Each spike in the shadow shows the local time at a corresponding geographical region."
A History of the Sky
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Kevin Murphy, artist and photographer, set up a time-lapse camera on the roof of the San Francisco Exploratorium to record the sky every 10 seconds, 24 hours per day for an entire year. The camera points due north at and elevation of 45 degrees, which means that you won’t see any dramatic sunrise or sunset, nor will you see a burning image of the sun. Even with the wide-angle lens, the sun is always kept just out of view. But what a wonderful view of the sky: Look closely at the video and you’ll see moving clouds, fog, rain, and differing colors of the sky.
Most stunning is the changing length of the day. Summer morning twilight begins about 4:10am (Pacific Standard Time) and evening twilight ends about 8:10pm, but you must be patient for the winter sky to appear. Winter morning twilight begins about 6:50am (PST) and evening twilight ends about 5:30pm. (There’s a small running clock in the bottom right corner to chart your progress). You’ll see the dramatic difference between summer and winter with days in darkness patiently waiting their turn at sunrise and conversely, the fast quenching of the blue sky into darkness well before the summer frames show any sign of paling.
Each frame is digitally photographed at 1024x768 pixels, that with compression, requires about half a terabyte storage per year. Kevin Murphy has been creative with the sky display: Thumbnail videos of each day of the year are collectively represented in a tiled mosaic 20 days wide by 18 days tall, showing 360 days of sky all at once. The images are arranged chronologically, and are synchronized by time of day, beginning before summer sunrise. Time is compressed in playback at 24 frames/second so that each second represents 4 minutes of time.
This is still a work still in progress: As the camera on the Exploratorium roof continues to collect images of the sky, they will be integrated into the daily montage. Therefore the video will vary from day to day, always displaying the most recent 365 days.
Visit http://www.murphlab.com/hsky/ for more information. Below is his video. It’s best played in full-screen HD resolution. Click the middle arrow to start, then click the bottom right frame box.
Virtual Art for Inventor of Standard Time
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A new sundial project called “Meantime in Greenwich” opened on “Dingle Day” August 6th in Sir Sandford Fleming Park (affectionately known as “Dingle Park”) located in the Halifax Regional Municipality of Nova Scotia. Media artist David Clark created a series of 24 horizontal sundials that surround the Memorial (Dingle) Tower, a site that once had been Fleming's summer home. Visitors to the public exhibit can download a free app onto their phone or iPad and hear an audio story when they approach each sundial. For iPhone users, aiming its camera at the sundial triggers a 3D object to appear on the screen. As Clark describes it, “Each sundial becomes a pedestal for virtual reality. Everybody becomes their own cinema.”
2012 Transit of Venus
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NASA has taken outstanding video of the June 6th 2012 transit of Venus. Images were recorded by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory Satellite that records the sun's surface and corona at a number of visible light and ultraviolet wavelengths. [See sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov] These images showing the 2012 transit of Venus were recorded at a wavelength of 171 Angstroms (AIA 171) (Extreme Ultraviolet). This channel is especially good at showing coronal loops - the arcs extending off of the Sun where plasma moves along magnetic field lines. The brightest spots seen here are locations where the magnetic field near the surface is exceptionally strong.
NASA video source and images may be found at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010900/a010996/index.html
Eclipse Sundial For May 20th, 2012
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Don’t miss the Solar Eclipse this Sunday, May 20th. Times of the eclipse can be found at http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OHtables/OH2012-Tab02.pdf
For those of you in the San Francisco – San Mateo California area, Bill Gottesman, NASS dialist, has created an “eclipse clock”, a new type of paper sundial made specifically for the partial solar. You need a simple pin-hole projector (a card with a small hole in it) to cast a shadow of the eclipsed sun. The angle of the moon’s shadow tells accurate time (at least for San Mateo California). Bill will discuss how he made this dial at the NASS Sundial Conference in Asheville this August. Come find out how he did it.
Sundial WebCam In Action
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Want to watch a sundial in action? Professor Woodruff Sullivan and Ian Smith at the University of Washington in Seattle have just launched an active webcam of the University’s large vertical declining sundial on the side of the Physics and Astronomy building. The webcam image is updated once per minute day and night. “we know that some of you will want to stare at it for hours on end (or at least bookmark it….”
Their website has many features including the first two time-lapse movies of the giant sundial showing the all-day shadow on the summer solstice and on the autumn equinox. More time lapse videos will be presented during the months that come. In the near future they will improve the present camera with higher-resolution and greater reliability.
A flurry of sundial webcams existed in 2004-05 when the EarthDial Project, the invention of Bill Nye and Woody Sullivan, was run under the auspices of The Planetary Society. The Project, with a motto Two Worlds, One Sun was run in conjunction with the MarsDial Project, which involved the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, each of which landed on Mars in 2004 with a small calibration target turned into a Mars sundial on its deck. People around the world were urged to build sundials of a standard design and display them to the world using a webcam. Click Here to See Time Lapse Movies of Some of These Dials. A new Mars sundial will arrive red at the red planet next August onboard Curiosity.
Take a look at the new webcam at http://sunny.astro.washington.edu
Hamilton Dial Restoration
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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 for restoration in 2025. A tri-fold brochure from the Butler County Historical Society is attached, explaining the restoration effort and asking for donations. Once restored it will be returned to Monument Park in Hamilton. NASS has contributed 1000 USD to the restoration effort and a local philanthropist has donated 5000 USD. Kathleen Fox, head of the restoration effort, reports that as of Nov 1, 2024, "Our total cash on hand now is a little over 15,000 USD and counting. We have two more months of the campaign left... and the goal of selling [memorial] bricks has just passed 100....We are also purchasing a polished granite hexagon piece on which to place the sundial. I have applied for a 2,500 USD grant to cover that cost."
Click on https://hamiltonthrive.com/c/restore-the-gar-sundial/ to read the history of this dial and to support the restoration effort through a 501(c)3. A short video is on this internet page explaining the restoration effort.
Louis B. Toomer and Sundial Remembered
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In June 2018 the Georgia Historical Society dedicated a historical marker in Chatham Square to Louis B. Toomer, which read in part "Louis Burke Toomer, African-American leader, local bank founder, and realtor, was born in Savannah in 1897. Raised and educated locally, Toomer established the Georgia Savings and Realty Corporation on February 23, 1927, in the historic black business district on West Broad Street. During segregation, the company provided banking, investment, and insurance services for blacks who were not always allowed access to white banking establishments...." [1]
But before the historical marker was the Louis B. Toomer sundial in Chatham Square. As Georgia Wright Benton (past president of the Savannah Chapter of the National Conference of Artists) recalled:
"The sundial was dedicted in the spring of 1963 by the Savannah Chapter of the National Conference of Artists ... an organization comprised of black students throughout Chatham County along with their art teachers. West Broad Street School for black students was closed in 1962 and the pupils were transferred to Barnard Street School. Members of the National Conference of Artists visited the new school and one of our members observed that the park in front of the school, Chatham Square, needed improvement. Beautification of Chatham Square became a project for the organization, and the group decided to place a sundial in the square. We wanted something permanent that represented the black community in front of the Barnard Street school."
"The organization held several fundraisers to pay for the sundial. The primary fundraiser was a concert held in the Beach High School auditorium during the fall of 1962. Our concert artist was Kiah’s sister, a soprano singer. The fundraiser was a success and the sundial was purchased with help from Carver State Bank and Toomer’s wife, Janie. ... This sundial was the first dedication to an African-American in a Savannah square contributed by black students of a black organization." [2]
Over the years vandals have attacked and damaged the sundial. Each time, members of the Savannah-Chatham Historic Site and Monument Commission restored the sundial, " [making] a public plea for help and a reminder to the monument marauder that destruction of public property is a felony..." [3] You can see more of this dial in the NASS Sundial Registry (Georgia/Savannah #942).
[1] https://georgiahistory.com/events/historical-marker-dedication-louis-b-toomer-founder-of-carver-state-bank/
[2] https://www.savannahnow.com/opinion/20181129/letters-to-editor-friday-recalling-history-of-chatham-square-sundial
[3] https://www.savannahnow.com/news/2012-01-18/vandals-target-chatham-square-marker
Restored Cranmer Dial Dedicated
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On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 the six-foot-tall Cranmer Sundial and surrounding Plaza were rededicated, celebrating the completion of a 2 million renovation project that started nearly two years ago. The city's Parks and Recreation Department replaced the cracked and sinking terrazzo plaza that was originally laid in the 1930s. They improved the drainage system that was a factor in the plaza's deteriation as well.
In 1941 George Cranmer placed a sundial of Chinese tradition on what was then called Mountain View Park. But in 1966 the original Cranmer Sundial was blown up with dynamite. The community rallied to raise funds and through the Erickson Monument Company, erected a large 6-foot disk equatorial dial of pink granitie on a terrazzo plaza. But the years did not treat the sundial well. When the sundial fell into disrepair the community pulled together again, and through the organization The Park People started "Save Our Sundial" and began fundraising. In all, citizens were able to raise $830,000 for the dial's repair. The Denver City Council committed to the rest of the funding, but the restoration would not be possible without the financial support of the residence of Hilltop community.
At the dedication, City Councilwoman of District 5, Mary Beth Susman said, “To have it restored to what George Cranmer’s vision was ... meaningful to all of us, and to have it restored in such a beautiful way, with the inlay still there, I can’t tell you how moving it is to celebrate this day.” [CBS News]
Read more:
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/our-colorado/-2-million-project-restores-historic-denver-sundial-at-cranmer-park
https://denver.cbslocal.com/2018/10/03/hilltop-cranmer-park-sundial/
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