Hello Spencer, We cannot answer your question. Azimuth is the angle in the horizontal plane and true north. What is your historical reference? Azimuth of what? The sun? What date and time? For the sun have you corrected for refraction, solar diameter, dip etc. What is your instrument error and personal error? What is your reference to true north? Polaris at culmination? Magnetic? These change with the date with precession and movement of the magnetic pole?
Nothing unexpected is happening with the the earth's orbit. There are known cycles for precession, eccentricity and obliquity. These likely trigger ice ages as the solar heating melting ice in the summer at high northern latitudes changes by up to 25% over predictable cycles. These well known orbital factors are described by the Milankovitch Cycles. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles At the recent NASS conference I gave a talk on "Sundial Science and Global Climate Change" that discussed the Milankovitch Cycles. Look for the article based on the presentation in an upcoming NASS Compendium. Other solar cycles are affecting our climate. The recent CERN Cloud experiment provided clear evidence that cosmic rays cause nucleation leading that may cause cloud formation. The solar magnetic storms and sunspots affect the number of cosmic rays hitting the earth's atmosphere. This helps explain the little ice age, the cool period in the middle ages when sunspots virtually disappeared for about 100 years. This is called the Maunder Minimum. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum This is one of several periods of low solar activity and higher incidence of cosmic rays. The last solar cycle was low and long. The current cycle was late to start and has only half the activity of an average 11 year cycle. The next cycle may not come. There is compelling evidence of this reduced solar activity described in Sky and Telescope Sept 2011 in an article "Is the Solar Cycle About to Stop" Are we entering a new solar activity minimum that will reduce global temperatures? Should we increase Carbon Dioxide emissions to compensate? Absolutely not! Regards, Roger Bailey Walking Shadow Designs From: Spencer Duane Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2011 9:49 AM To: [email protected] Subject: The Sun's Azimuth Has anyone noticed any differences in the sun's azimuth lately? I have found some pretty compelling information regarding the azimuth not being where it is historically expected to be... What have you guys found? 'If you're going through hell, keep going.' - Winston Churchill Spencer D. Miles CB: 7; <SURVEYOR> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
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