Hello Frank,
Thanks for reminding us of Omar Khayyam's calendar based on a 33 year cycle.
John Dee's implementation of this calendar would reduce the equinox variation
to 24 hours. At one longitude, 77° W, the equinox would always be on the same
day. Is this God's Longitude?
Based on your inspiration and advice 10 years ago, I reviewed Simon Cassidy's
original historical and mathematical research and Duncan Steel's book "Marking
Time: The Quest for the Perfect Calendar" He nominated Dee's calendar as the
greatest invention in two millennia.
I summarized the "long story", an alt-history, in a presentation that Fred
Sawyer gave at the NASS Conference in 2007. "God's Longitude and the Lost
Colony of Virginia" It is available at my website here:
http://www.walkingshadow.info/Publications/GodsLongitude.ppt a 7 MB pppt file.
This is relevant today as Donald Trump is crowned at God's Longitude, 77° W,
Washington DC
Roger Bailey
Walking Shadow Designs
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Frank King" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2017 8:33 AM
To: "John Goodman" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Sundial List" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Unusual bi-annual sundial
> Dear John,
>
> I wondered when someone would spot that there is a
> whole can of worms waiting to be opened here...
>
>> Won't the factors that necessitate the addition
>> of a leap day prevent this alignment from
>> happening at exactly 11/11 11:11 every year?
>
> Quite so. No doubt you looked at the time-lapse
> video and spotted that the circle of light DIDN'T
> properly centre itself on the Great Seal of the
> United States. This is surely only one step less
> sinful than being disrespectful to the US flag?
>
> OK, take a deep breath and see what we are up
> against...
>
> First we need to be clear what is meant by the
> time 11:11? I assume this is clock time in
> Anthem, Arizona, and a little research suggests
> they are on Mountain Time there and that they
> don't observe Daylight Saving. [Just think how
> the whole scheme could be wrecked if they did
> go over to Daylight Saving and the clocks didn't
> go back until after 11 November!]
>
> To me, their interest is at 18:11:00 UTC but that
> is a detail.
>
> The big difficulty is that, at this exact time of
> day, the solar declination varies with the leap
> year cycle and there is a steady drift. As a
> result both the solar altitude and solar azimuth
> vary from one year to the next. Let's see by
> how much...
>
> I'll take it that the Geographical Coordinates
> of Anthem are:
>
> 33° 51' 15" N 112° 7' 30"
>
> Using GCstudio I determined the following data
> for 10 years starting in 2016, a leap year:
>
> 2016 -17°41'09" +36°25'01" +161°40'45"
> 2017 -17°37'11" +36°28'55" +161°39'53"
> 2018 -17°33'13" +36°32'52" +161°39'05"
> 2019 -17°29'12" +36°36'55" +161°38'33"
> 2020 -17°41'38" +36°24'36" +161°41'11"
> 2021 -17°37'47" +36°28'23" +161°40'14"
> 2022 -17°33'48" +36°32'21" +161°39'31"
> 2023 -17°29'52" +36°36'14" +161°38'36"
> 2024 -17°42'18" +36°23'55" +161°41'16"
> 2025 -17°38'23" +36°27'48" +161°40'23"
>
> The four columns show: year, declination, alt, az
> as they are at Anthem at 11:11:00 Mountain Time
> on 11 November in the 10 years shown.
>
> Take declination first. You see that starting in
> 2016 the declination gets about 4 minutes less
> negative on successive years until there is a
> sudden jump back which is A LITTLE TOO BIG.
> This sets the pattern. We become less negative
> until 2024 when there is another jump.
>
> The jumps back over-compensate because the tropical
> year is slightly less than 365.25 days.
>
> You will see that the solar altitude increases by
> just under 4' a year before falling back just over
> 12' in a leap year. You will see that even in this
> little table the range of altitudes is about 11'
> and this will be noticed by careful observers.
>
> The azimuth varies too of course but by not so
> much and its main effect is to make you have to
> worry about just how to align the slabs.
>
> OK, what should they have done?
>
> Well one approach is to settle on the 2016 figures
> and note that over the next 36 years the data for
> 2016 will be somewhere near the middle. After
> that the drift will become more noticeable but the
> designer will probably be dead and won't care.
>
> Things gradually get worse and worse until The
> Great Correction over the years 2096 to 2004
> when the omission of a leap year in 2100 will
> reverse some of the damage.
>
> Most people know that the Gregorian Calendar
> was an improvement over the Julian Calendar but
> almost all readers of this list will live their
> entire lives enduring pure Julian Drift.
>
> This is a massive imposition and we should all
> be lobbying for a much better 33-year Calendar
> originally designed by Omar Khayyam in 1079,
> long before John Dee and others rediscovered
> it. This was over 500 years before Pope
> Gregory's tinkering in 1582. Why didn't
> Pope Gregory do a proper job then?
>
> That's a long story but the result is that we
> are lumbered with an unhelpful calendar which
> is, I suppose, upward-compatible with its
> predecessor.
>
> I share the view that "upward-compatibility is
> the business of deliberately not putting right
> someone else's mistakes".
>
> Many apologies. Another rant I fear!
>
> Very best wishes
>
> Frank
>
> Frank King
> Cambridge, U.K.
>
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