Message text written by John Carmichael >Or, instead of using a person, I could place a vandal-resistant vertical post, pilar or obelisk at the dial center which could be used for sunset & sunrise date/time/ direction readings and this would also give the dial a three- dimensional aspect as suggested by Sara Schechner. This would draw attention to the dial. Also, the hour lines would radiate from this point.<
You will need to form a balance between having the pole as an attention drawing device and it generating its own possibly confusing shadow. Incidentally, if you had such a pole you could place a nodus on it and that could be used for declination lines.... >Also, in order to be able to tell time with short shadows around noon in the summer and to accomodate short people, it will be very important to mark the hour lines as close as possible to the gnomon foot (where the people stand). Correct?< Yes it will - but that is good because the presence of hour lines helps you with very short shadows. A true analemmatic dial has no hour lines and it is this that makes it hard to read at all accurately with humans of short stature.. >By the way, what do you think of marking the places the human gnomons should stand using four sets of footprints (4ft. 5ft. 6ft. & 7ft,)? Sort of corney and not very artistic, huh?< No not at all. In fact I would encourage you to do it because in my experience people using human marker dials tend to put their toes up against the line rather than the underside of their heel (which is more likely to be directly under your head!). Footprints would therefore help eliminate that error. Of course you need to place the heel of the drawn footprint in line with where you think their head will be! All the best
