30 Seconds – An Analemma!
If you took a photo of the sun at the same time each day and superimposed them on the same picture what shape would you expect? A dot? ( stays in the same position), or an ellipse? How about a figure of eight? It's called an analemma- the photo shows this. It was taken over the period of one year in the Ukraine by Vasilij Rumyantsev of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.
The shape of this is derived from the motion of the earth around the sun and the tilt of the earth's axis. The earth isn't like a sphere just rotating about the axis. If you stuck a giant stick through the earth's poles and watched the end, you would see that. For much much more information, download this 49 page pdf on the subject. There is some mathematics but not a lot.
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Posted: January 1st, 2012 under default.
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