Hi Roger Bailey and other dear friends:
Two questions:
1) Last week i red a magazine called "Cosinus" (a french publication to kids). One of the articles was about the highest full moon in the year being the one closest to the Winter solstice (Northern Hemisphere) - during this day we could "watch" the "lowest sun" to a given latitude and the biggest shadow.
I'm writing something about this "curiosity" ("the highest and lowest sun" and "the highest and lowest moon" during an year) to the school journal but i would like to know more about this subject (calculations, pictures, schemes, etc.) that could help me being more accurate. Could you or anyone help me with this subject? (Internet sites or so).
2) I'm also doing (with students) the well known activity: determining the N-S (and E-W) directions by marking the end of a stick shadow during several hours of a day and then, connect all the points obtained and see the curved line and so on... I'm also trying to see the line that we obtain during solstices and equinoxes days and dates between this ones to make comparisons (by the way, speaking in mathematical terms, what can we consider this curves?). I will try to compare the curved lines with the ones obtained in dates close to the ones wehave work but in Southern Hemisphere (contact schools in Brasil or other countries).
A) Does anyone knows sites about this activities and astronomical explanations with draws and pictures?
B) Does anyone knows schools that have made this activities included in astronomy or geography projects?
(I've already searched google in english, portuguese and spanish but i'm not satisfied with the materials i obtained).
Thank you very much.
Sorry if i wasn't very clear explaining my doubt but my english...
Rui Farinha
Roger Bailey wrote:
Hi Dave,
When the moon was full on 30 December, its declination was 24 degrees north.
Using the formula below this would put it at an altitude of 76.7 degrees at
your latitude. This is half a degree higher than the sun ever gets at your
latitude. The moon can get to a declination of ~29 degrees as its orbital
plane is tilted about 6 degrees from the ecliptic. The moon can get even
closer to the zenith at your location.
It is hard to judge how close celestial bodies are to the zenith. One trick
is to turn around, full circle while watching the body. The distance from
the zenith is much more apparent when you have seen it from all sides as you
turn.
Roger Bailey
Walking Shadow Designs
N 51 w 115
where the sun only gets to an altitude of 15.5 degrees these days!
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -koeln.de
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dave Bell
Sent: January 6, 2002 6:20 PM
To: Sundial, Mailinglist
Subject: Was Re: Polar ceiling sundial
On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, fer j. de vries wrote:The max. altitude of the sun h = 90 - phi + 23.5 degrees.
This reminded me of something I saw recently, that was a bit of a puzzle:
I live at 37.3N latitude. This puts the mean plane of the Ecliptic at
something like 52.7 degrees elevation. Near the Winter Solstice, the Sun
is 23.5 degrees depressed, or a maximum elevation of 29.2 degrees. I can't
recall offhand what the angle of the Moon's orbit is, relative to the
Ecliptic, but a week or so back, very near full Moon, we came out of a
movie theater late, near midnight. I would swear the Moon was barely 5 or
10 degrees off the Zenith! It seemed hard to imagine, at this time of year
in the North...
Dave
37.29N 121.97W
