Earlier quoted context omitted.
and yes, the maths fails when you are super super high north or south
You should try to address the latitude issue. (Says the guy who has only to spend a few seconds typing that.)
done
The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
81–90 of 104 posts
Re: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
With your app, it seems daylight today in Chicago is the same length as yesterday's solstice, although it starts and ends 30 seconds later. today - 07:18:59 → 16:24:29 = 9:5:30. yesterday - 7:18:23 → 16:23:53 = 9:5:30
Sunrise and sunset aren't in phase (or exactly out of phase). The latest sunrise and the earliest sunset don't happen on the same day and neither happens on the solstice. Not at this northern latitude anyway.
Where I am the sunset is already three minutes later than its earliest time but it will be another two weeks until the sunrises start getting earlier
Re: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
#83my modern equivalent(I needed last year for surfing (after i needed to cut a surf trip short as it became night)) https://daylight.franzai.com/
Love it, bookmarked.
I first saw this idea at https://jmw.name/projects/linear-clock/ and then later I wrote a TUI version for myself
I had tickmarks for stuff (when to go to bed to sleep for 7.5h and wake up near sunrise, things like that). I was working on adding a config file format.
Then I lost the project due to a mishap with a pipx flag... https://github.com/pypa/pipx/issues/1324#issuecomment-211885... ;_; o7
One day maybe I'll come back and do it in Rust.
Re: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey! nice little useful web page. I like the minimalism of it. Does the math fail because of not considering (i) equation of time and (ii) oblateness of the Earth ?
because mathematically a day can have more than 24h daylight and less than 0 fixed it
Got it. Will happen whenever the latitude is complement of the declination.
Thanks for replying.
Re: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
#85How did ancient cultures know when the solstice was? If you didn't tell me it was the 21st, I don't know how I'd be able to tell you other than by carefully measuring the sunrise and sunset times
Honestly I bet you would have at least a reasonable intuition about it if you were among them. It's pretty remarkable how much our distractions and 'being indoors' all the time dulls our senses to nature. I started doing astrophotography about three years ago. I'd always been interested in 'space' but never really spent hours upon hours out at night over the course of months actually just studying the night sky. I re…
That's amazing. Thank you.
Re: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
#86How did ancient cultures know when the solstice was? If you didn't tell me it was the 21st, I don't know how I'd be able to tell you other than by carefully measuring the sunrise and sunset times
Try making it through a few northern European winters as a pre-modern farmer. I'm sure you will develop a keener interest in measuring these things.
Re: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> as are they everywhere else, presumably! They aren't "all over the place" in the US, and I certainly don't have a local archaeologist that I can just call up. FWIW: The Northeastern US is quite recent with human presence. It wasn't settled until after the last ice age. Pretty much anything old is celebrated because there is so little of anything old.
> They aren't "all over the place" in the US, and I certainly don't have a local archaeologist that I can just call up… The Northeastern US is quite recent with human presence Fun fact, New England has at least 71 different stonework “prayer sites” that are all astrologically aligned. Two of the most notable are King Philip’s Cave (Sharon, MA) with a stone aperture through which a "dagger of light" appears specifical…
When they built the new High School in my old home town in western CT one of the local archaeologists (day job: science teacher) did some exploration on site and discovered all sorts of stuff - no funding for a proper dig so they capped it and put up a plaque about it (ISTR they put the tennis courts on top since that disturbed it least?)
So, yeah, there's lots of archaeology in New England, it's just that a lot of it is literally buried or otherwise not called out. (And "in the US, 100 years is a long time; in the UK, 100 miles is a long distance" is also Just How It Is...)
Re: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
#88This reminded me of The Anasazi Sun Temple that catches the first light of the Summer Solstice in a specific point in the temple. I first discovered this watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos early this year (which I'd highly recommend, BTW) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Rinconada
[dead]
Re: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The local archaeologist? Incredible
Oh, he works for the county, but happened to live just up the hill from us. There's so much old stuff around here that he is basically being called out to perform an assessment every time anyone wishes to build anything. Where we live now, for instance, there are a handful of burial mounds from God knows when (all plundered long ago), lots of old charcoal pits, a couple of late stone age fish traps in the lake in a c…
As someone from a place that is less than a century old this sounds incredible!
Re: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, he works for the county, but happened to live just up the hill from us. There's so much old stuff around here that he is basically being called out to perform an assessment every time anyone wishes to build anything. Where we live now, for instance, there are a handful of burial mounds from God knows when (all plundered long ago), lots of old charcoal pits, a couple of late stone age fish traps in the lake in a c…
As someone from a place that is less than a century old this sounds incredible!
It is until you try to build something!
(Nothing quite like watching an archeologist go 'Oooh, that's interesting!' during a dig to establish whether you can go ahead building on your chosen spot...)