dimanche 17 avril 2016

Celestial mechanics

I've been planning planting schemes for my garden and became intrigued by the path of the Sun. This led me to wondering about the angular position of the Sun at given times of day. I have some planetarium software and find that for my location at 06:00 and 18:00 the Sun ranges across 30-degrees of azimuth over the year. At 12:00 it ranges over 20-degrees.

What are the components that cause this angular movement? I was a bit surprised how widely it varied never having thought about it in detail before. In particular, why is the Sun not reliably due South at noon? The latter must mean that my Boy Scout use of my watch as a compass to find South isn't as accurate as I thought!


via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/268x2jC

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