Analemma from Dublin, Ohio

August 27, 2019

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Photographer: Raj Muddana 
Summary Authors: Raj Muddana; Jim Foster

Click here to see a video of this analemma, the path described by the Sun during the course of a year. It was captured over Dublin Ohio. I created this animation to help explain why a vertical analemma (when the Sun’s position is near solar noon) shows a figure 8 in the sky or on a globe.

From my home in Dublin, I observed the solar disk at 1:32 p.m. for an entire year, each day that the sky in the vicinity of the Sun was clear. The 23.5-degree tilt of the Earth, with respect to the plane of its orbit about the Sun, and the fact that the Earth’s orbit is elliptical not circular results in this figure 8 pattern.