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Dear all,
In Amersfoort, a city in The Netherlands, in front
of the railway station, the first public "Zonnewijzer" is placed.
To understand this you need to learn some Dutch at
first.
In our language a sundial is named
"Zonnewijzer".
As such we are lucky to have a number of
beautiful sundials in our country.
But the word Zonnewijzer also may be split into 2
words, "Zon" and "Wijzer".
Zon = Sun
Wijzer = Pointer
Doing this "Zonnewijzer" also could mean "sun
pointer" ( this isn't usual, just for this story ).
In Amersfoort recently a sun pointer is
erected.
It is a mechanical driven and computer controled
arrow that always points to the sun, during the day and the night, in all kind
of weather, cloudy or clear.
A picture of it may be found at
In the arrow are 2 digital displays, one for civil
time and one for local suntime.
In this way people can read the difference between
"artificial time" and "natural time".
The longitude correction for Amersfoort is about 39
minutes. ( west of the time meridian).
The EoT on the
day the picture was taken ( 21 jan. 2000 ) was about -11 minutes. ( dial is
slow )
The total correction then is 50
minutes.
On the picture is read :
suntime 11:25 civil time 12:15
This is the same differenrence as the
calculated correction.
Are there more "sun pointers" in the
world?
Visit The Netherlands, Visit Amersfoort
................
Fer J. de Vries
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.iae.nl/users/ferdv/ Eindhoven, Netherlands lat. 51:30 N long. 5:30 E |
