This was a project for a customer who brought in the idea of making a sundial with an analemma shaped gnomon to increase precision – we designed the sundial from there and printed a few pieces and they have explicitely allowed us to offer the same sundial for sale to anyone else.
Basically the idea goes as following: Due to the earths slightly eccentric orbit as wll as it’s axial tilt the sun actually does not always appear at the same appearent position in the sky at the same time, making sundials somewhat unprecise – by using the shape of that 2 dimensional appearent movement and turning that into the shape of the gnommon or pointer of the sundial however you can correct that error and make a sundial that can be read with 1-2 minutes of precision. The edge of the pointers shadow in this case counts as the time on the scale, the left edge or the right edge depending on wether it’s the first or second half of the year.
Wikipedia on the basics of sun motion
The shape of the analemma has to be trigonometrically corrected to actually work, after doing the calculations we designed this version of the sundial – keep in mind that this is custom designed for any geogrpaphic location so if you order one we need to know your location so we can change the design accordingly – you can send us a message or e-mail with the order or we can just use your shipping address
You can order one under Order Example Objects or the German version ‚Beispielobjekte bestellen‘ depending on your location
