On 2 November John Hoy wrote:
>
>Daylight savings time is gone!! HOORAY! I'm sure lots of you love it but
>not me.
Of course, it's just started Down Under!
>On another note, what sort of sundial installation would be particularly
>well suited to mark the 45th parallel? I like the idea of using a
>vertical-horizontal pair and a two sided equatorial dial, something like
>the one in the sunclocks book. The idea is to get something that really
>shows that there is something special about 45 degrees lat.
>
>I recently went to the Oregon coast. There is a tribal casino which is
>right by, if not right on, the 45th parallel. It's called Chinook Winds.
>They have a TV commercial with a helicopter flying over the casino. The
>45th is off in the undeveloped area at the right of the screen. I'm
>considering pitching a monumental sundial to them. They've got the land
>and they've got the money.
>
>I'd really like to hear your ideas for a big expensive sundial to sit at
>45 degrees north within view of the ocean.
John,
I think my starting point would be _not_ with 45 degrees latitutde
but rather with local culture. My initial guess, since this is in the
Pacific Northwest, would be that one would be able to use an appropriate
monumental 'totem pole' as a vertical gnomon. If that proves to be the
case, _then_ the question of what's appropriate for 45 degrees north
becomes interesting...
My initial preference would be for an equiangular circular dial,
such as the Royal Greenwich Observatory dial. A quick drawing indicates
that with a vertical gnomon it would incline at an appropriate 45 degrees.
Perhaps it could rest on a small landscaped 'mountain'.
(I should add here a very belated note of thanks to Fer de Vries
for having posted the brilliant paper "Equator Projection Sundials" by
Bruno Ernst (a pseudonym for J.A.F. de Rijk) on his web site. I haven't
looked recently, but the URL for it _was_
http://www.IAEhv.nl/users/ferdv/projdial.htm . At any rate--it is the
inspiration for this particular 'rush of blood to the head'.)
An equiangular dial should offer you a chance to think up some
really interesting (= expensive!) technical solutions. The biggest would
be a computer-controlled, all-weather gnomon mover to track the declination
of the Sun. The computer could also drive another daily adjustment to the
circular dial to take care of the Equation of Time.
And...to get us back where we started, Daylight Savings Time!
Bring on the photons, I say.
happy dialing,
Peter
