🚀 go-pugleaf

steveo@think.com (stephen anthony) writes:


>Here's a question that's stumped me for a while, but I've not known who to
>ask. If this group isn't the appropriate forum, let me know and I'll go
>elsewhere.

>There's a bit of reservation land nearby that has what they call the
>'solstice stones'. Nothing like Stonehenge, or anything, but simply a set
>of stones in the ground that mark the ordinal points of the compass, along
>with the sun rise/set points for the summer and winter solstice. The
>placement of these solstice stones confirmed something I had known for a
>bit; that in the Northern Hemisphere, the point of sunrise/set on the
>summer solstice is above the east-west axis. Since, the sun on that day is
>at it's highest (Tropic of Cancer (or is it Capricorn?)) and that that is
>far south of eastern Massachusetts, how can this be? 

>I tried to explain it by using the fact that the earth is (almost) a
>sphere, and that at dawn here, it's noon 7 hours ahead (so somewhere around
>the Mideast), and perhaps the apparent angles make it appear that the sun
>is rising above the east-west axis. But I was unable to prove this to my
>satisfaction.

>Does anyone have an explanation for this, or a pointer to a reference?

>I'd appreciate it.

The sun rises in the east, falls in the west on the equinoxes, not the
solstices. A little experimentation with a sphere whose axis of rotation
is inclined about 21 degrees with respect to the plane in ahich it orbits
around a light source will make this all very clear.

Regards,
       H. Biesel