What's New Under The Sun
Prosciutto di Portici Sundial's Owner
Tuesday, 10 June 2025 18:51
Prosciutto di Portici (Ham) Sundial
Photo: Getty Images
The Prosciutto di Portici Sundial, more often called the Portici Ham Sundial, dates from the first century somewhere between 8 BCE to 79 CE. This small silvered bronze dial was uncovered on 11 June, 1755 in the ruins of Herculaneum (current day Portici) in the "Villa of the Papyri", buried in...
Hamilton Dial Dedicated
Friday, 06 June 2025 21:01
Sundial dedication May 31, 2025. At left is Kathleen Stuckey Fox, with the City Proclamation presented by Mayor Pat Moeller and City Council on-lookers Carla Fiehrer and Susan Vaughn offering congratulations.
On May 31, 2025 at 1pm, the Hamilton, Ohio, sundial (NASS Sundial Registry #1109) was re-dedicated in Monument Park. Originally dedicated in 1941 to the...
Frans Maes Received a Royal Decoration
Monday, 24 March 2025 21:33
Several years ago Frans decided to write the course on sundials that included self assessment questions to force students not only to read the text, but to internalize the concepts. And a final submittal question "not necessarily a difficult question, but: no answer, no new lesson." Thus Frans Maes began writing lessons and sending them out to students.
NASS has now used his material to create...
Pros and Cons of Daylight Savings Time
Monday, 24 March 2025 15:37
In a 24 March 2025 article from the on-line Science Advisor (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Phie Jacobs summarizes the "great debate" of the yearly shift from standard time to daylight savings time. In January 2025 the US Senate introduced the Sunshine Protection Act to permanently have daylight savings time year round. Certainly 54% of Americans do not like the...
Native American Moon Alignment Ring
Friday, 21 March 2025 19:26
Perhaps the most famous alignment circle in the United States is the Cahokia Woodhenge near St. Louis constructed between 700-1400 CE by Cahokia Indigenous native Americans. But there were an estimated 10,000 other earthen mounds that once were scatter across the mid-west..
In an article from Atlas Obscura (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/octagon-earthworks-ohio) by Olivia Young on March...
Hamilton Dial under Restoration
Friday, 21 March 2025 18:37
The Hamilton dial is in the restorative care of Jarrett and Celene Hawkins (Hawkins & Hawkins Custom, LLC in Cincinnati Ohio https://www.studio-hawkins.com/) in preparation for the dial's dedication on Saturday, May 31, 2025.
The face of the Hamilton Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) sundial has been cleaned and bead-blasted showing the dial as it was cast 84 years ago. In the process,...
Register for the 2025 NASS Conference
Tuesday, 11 February 2025 00:27
We will celebrate our 30th annual NASS Sundial Conference in Ottawa, Ontario 7-10 August 2025. But you need to register by April 15th to get theFull and Partial attendee rates at a discount. We will be staying at Le Germain Hotel Ottawa, 30 Daly Avenue, Ottawa ON Canada. We have a block of rooms at a discount daily room rate of 284 CAD (approx. 216 USD) plus HST and MAT taxes. ...
VSSC Space Museum gets Polar Sundial
Tuesday, 17 December 2024 23:47
In November 2024, a team consisting of members from SPL, TTDG and CMD of VSSC successfully designed and installed an accurate and fully functional sundial at the Rocket Garden of VSSC Space Museum, Thumba (8.53°N, 76.86°E). Following a space theme, the vertical gnomon is a 3-stage rocket that casts its daily and seasonal shadow on a dial face 1 1/2 meters by 1 meter. The the sundial face...
Historic Sundials of Andalusia
Saturday, 16 November 2024 00:07
Esteban Martínez Almirón has published a new book Historical Sundials: Forgotten Andalusian Treasures (Relojes de Sol Históricos Tesoros Andaluces Olvidados) In it he reviews over 400 sundials from the Andalucian region of southern Spain Originally to celebrate the 25th year of the website https://relojandalusi.org/
Esteban Martínez Almirón began showing his sundial drawings on the site....
Shelbyville Sundial
Wednesday, 13 November 2024 19:36
It isn't often that a sundial face is created before the gnomon is attached. In Shelbyville IN a large, circular art piece in the form of a sundial, was created at the Blue River Trailhead early in 2024. If they had chosen an analemmatic sundial, a walker of the trail could have simply stood on the appropriate date and used his or her own shadow to tell the local solar time. ...
Sun Tower Competed
Monday, 04 November 2024 18:38
The Sun Tower's shadow marks the passing of the seasons
credit Jonathan Leijonhufvud
For two years News Atlas (https://newatlas.com/architecture/) has reported on the progress of the construction of the Sun Tower in Yantai, China. The 164-foot (50m) curved conical tower was designed by OPEN Architecture symbolized the watch towers of the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644 CE)...
Hamilton Dial Restoration
Monday, 04 November 2024 17:30
NASS Registered Sundial #1109 at https://sundials.org/index.php/sundial-registry/onedial/1109 is one of a series of bronze sundials presented by Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, dedicated to the memory of the Grand Army of the Republic. Unfortunately the dial in Hamilton, Ohio, suffers from neglect and the gnomon has long been missing.
With support, this dial has been designated...
Sundials at STEM Festival
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Members of The North American Sundial Society and Analemma Society will be participating in the 3rd USA Science & Engineering Festival. Mark your calendars for Saturday and Sunday April 26 and 27th at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington DC. This is a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) exposition. In recognition of the Festival’s role in making STEM a national priority, Congress recently designated the last week in April as National Science Week.
NASS and the Analemma Society along with other expo presenters have more than 3,000 hands-on activities. NASS and the Analemma Society will introduce students and families to a variety of sundials and offering hands-on activities to cut them out and test them using a solar heliograph. It's all free. Come and learn about Sundials – The World’s Oldest Clocks.
The Science & Engineering Festival will also have a book fair—complete with signings by well-known science authors. Bill Nye the science guy will be there as well as Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs on Discover Channel), Nate Bell (Design Squad on PBS) and the cast and crew from TV shows like Big. Bang Theory, as part of over 100 live stage performances.
Old News is New
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Building on the success of the 2010 USA Science & Engineering Festival, the North American Sundial Society and Analemma Society joined nearly 1500 other activities at the Expo in Washington DC on April 28-29, 2012 presenting "Sundials, the World's Oldest Clocks". That's the old news. The new twist is that Ken Clark of NASS made it to youtube describing sundials. You can watch too:
USA Science & Engineering Festival
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On April 28-29, the North American Sundial Society and Analemma Society participated in the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington DC, presenting “Sundials – The world’s oldest clocks” at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington D.C.
Photo shows opening day with Ken Clark and Jeff Kretsch helping students learn about sundials while parents look on. A great first day at the Science and Engineering Festival. And the second day was equally exciting.
Parents, teachers, students, and children of all ages were able to participate in over 3,000 hands-on science and engineering activities. On stage among many others was Bill Nye the Science Guy and Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, hosts of the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters.
Volunteers from the North American Sundial Society and The Analemma Society talked to over 1000 attendees about sundials, sundial history, and making paper sundials to show how sundials work
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Parents Donate Sundial
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Mark and Clare Hoggart have three daughters, all of whom attended and graduated from the Joseph Rowntree school in the UK. Now, in appreciation, the Hoggarts have donated an analemmatic sundial to the school, saying, “It’s just a thank-you for getting the girls through their education. They have all got on really well and have blossomed into lovely young ladies. We want to thank them for the effort they have shown them as individuals.” The sundial has been installed outside the science block.
The Hoggarts, who own an ornamental gardenware company, have already received orders from others who are interested in a similar installation. See the NASS website on dial construction for further plans to build an analemmatic sundial.
Sundials on the Mall 2012
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NASS and the Analemma Society, inspired by the success of the 2010 USA Science and Engineering Festival, are registering for the Festival on the Washington D.C. Mall. The event, supported by volunteers from both NASS and the Analemma Society is scheduled for the Spring of 2012.
NASS and the Analemma Society will have a booth to teach families and children how to make sundials and read sundial time with the theme: Sundials, the Worlds Oldest Clocks.
We expect the return of many of the sundialist volunteers that supported the 2010 Festival. For the coming year, we expect to improve our educational goals beyond the popular “Great Sundial Cutout.” What else is in store? Stay tuned as we formulate our educational material. Have and idea? Please send an email toRobert Kellogg
For more information on all Festival events and how you can get involved, visit www.usasciencefestival.org.
Analemma
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Russell Goyder has a new Python program simply called Analemma. But the program is far from simple as it is able to compute the shape and provide visualizations of the analemma for any planet in our solar system. His documentation and approach chooses to use the inertial frame of our solar system and apply vectors of position to determine the analemma and equation of time. "From the documentation, you can run and modify any [Python Jupyter] notebook yourself by clicking on the 'launch binder' button." Analemma uses SymPy and GAlgebra to encode and present the mathematics of the analemma.
His notebook is at: https://russellgoyder.ca/analemma/
A number of authors have used vector algebra to obtain trigonometric formulas many of us use. Goyder however uses the world of geometric algebra that consists of "outer products" and "bivectors". The terms are unfamiliar to many, but when explained, result in creating familiar trig formulas. An introduction to geometric algebra can be found at https://bivector.net/ with several informative videos.
Astronomy Teaching Tools - Sundials, Globes, Astrolabes and More
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John Krieger, a former science teacher, is a strong supporter of STEM in the classroom and science in the real world. Bollards at Laguna Nigel in southern California might offer the opportunity to teach a bit of astronomy.
John says, "I don’t mean to imply that every concrete curb stop should be turned into an astronomical instrument. But why can’t we have more of these things around us? The ‘globe sundial’ is not an original idea of mine. People have actually made them, but they are depressingly rare....Sometimes someone does go to the trouble of making a beautiful, scientifically literate public display, and places it in full view of the everyday public, and even provides instructions..." 
Many of these public displays are sundials and during John's career, he developed aids to teach astronomy to schoolchildren. At his website, he makes an array of paper sundials, globes, astrolabes and quadrants available in PDF form for printing and easy constructing to make an accurate sundial or globe with explanation of how it works. "Most of them are printable PDF files that you can download and give to kids to label, cut out, and use as the basis of some activity... Officially, I am making all of these works available under a Creative Commons — Attribution License, which means you may do anything you like with them, as long as you give me credit as the creator."
And don't worry about adjusting for latitude. His paper instruments are available for download at every 10 degrees of latitude from 60 deg south to 60 deg north, which for example would be appropriate for use in Reykjavik, Iceland. In North America, 20 degrees covers lower Florida, 30 degrees is suitable for southern California, 40 degrees works for the big US east coast cities, and 50 degrees is appropriate for Calgary in the heart of Alberta.
Downloads available at: https://www.astronomyforthinkers.com/downloads/
For the Hemispherical Dial, go to: https://www.instructables.com/A-Hemispherical-Paper-Sundial/
Sundial Atlas Paper Sundials
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Need a small sundial for your display or science project? Want to show how different sundials cast shadows? Need a simple cut-out science exercise for your students? Fabio Savian of Milan Italy has the solution. For a number of years he has managed the Sundial Atlas website, ever increasing the number of sundial photos from around the world. Over the last several years he has worked very hard to create the gnomolab that includes a solar compass map of the earth, cloud software for creating analemmatic (human shadow) sundials, and a section for making paper sundials to your specification. The analemmatic dial measurements and papger dial designs are created as download PDF files. Four of those dials were created by the North American Sundial Society. Enjoy. Sundial Atlas Paper Sundials
Connetquot Students Use Sundials to Tell Time
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Second-grade students at Connetquot Elementary School in Islip, New York, created sundials using paper plates and pencils. The pencil gnomons were set mostly vertical by the students and then they traced the resulting shadows at three times during the day. This helped teachers Leslie Davis and Melissa Love demonstrate the sun’s apparent movement in the sky and talk about the earth's rotation as the cause. "The students really had fun," said Love, "and they were able to recognize that a sundial is a tool that can be used to measure time."