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Plot the Sun Contest:
As you may know, if you have read this site for any length of time, we have mentioned on several occasions that it sure looks like some odd stuff is going on with the sun. Now, my colleague Cliff, over at www.halfpasthuman.com and I are arguing about just how far out of position the sun really is. Cliff's reckoning seems to suggest it is out of position by a bit more than 1 degree, while my own measurements, while admittedly somewhat imprecise, seem to show the sun out of position by about 0.48%. I have set up this page so that you may inspect my methodology and ask that you conduct your own experiments, especially with the equinox on June 21st rapidly approaching, because it appears that the equinox may be "off" this year.
Your participation is important because the more measurements submitted, the more likely we are to find the truth. CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR OWN FINDINGS
We're working on a prize - like a one year subscription to our site, or a copy of Bob Prechter's landmark book on the Elliott Wave - but we haven't figured out how to judge who's closest, until NASA or some organization of that ilk publishes the real "drift" of the sun.
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The Sun Out of Place Experiment
I have had dozens of readers mention to me in the past year - as parts of other email traffic - that the "sun sure seems to be out of place." The most common observations are that the sun is rising north of where it should in the eastern sky at dawn, is setting north of it's customary summer setting point in the western sky/
In order to resolve this matter once and for all, my colleague Cliff and I have challenged one another. Below is a description of the methodology I have followed to arrive at the conclusion that the sun is at least 0.48 degrees north of where it should be.
The ramifications of this are incredible, but they seem to center around the following:
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The Tropic of Cancer, that is the northernmost latitude where the sun is directly overhead is no longer 23.5 degrees. It appears by my measures to be 24 degrees, while Cliff's measurements suggest slightly more.
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This would certainly explain the phenomena of global warming neatly because the polar areas would receive more solar energy and would therefore warm more than they have in the past.
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The increase in excursion from the equator would also explain too neatly why strawberry crops in the northern climates were early this year, and why the "tornado ally" weather which we expect much closer to us here in Texas is now north - in fact up to the Canadian plains provinces
Experiment Setup
I'll begin with a simple diagram to explain how this measuring of the sun was performed. Please refer to Figure 1 below as it shows the "expected" outcome of the experiment and the actual outcome summarized.
Now let's go on to Figure 2 and see how we will conduct the measurements schematically. As shown, the simple way to measure the sun's angle is to place a nail with a nylon line and a centered fishing sinker even with the end of the roof of a sufficiently tall building. In this case we used my outbuilding/office/workshop because it's close to the computer, air conditioning, and the ladder was handy.
The PROBLEM is that when I carefully set up the plumb line and measured as carefully as I could, what I found was that the angle of the sun not casting a shadow anywhere near as long as it should onto the precisely leveled horizontal board. The shadow being too short means the sun is too far north for where it should be.
The distance from the peak of the roof and even with the edge of the metal roof to the "X" which I marked on the level board is 180 5/8ths inches. (180.625 in decimal terms because I set everything up decimal because I'm lazy and don't feel like doing unnecessary conversions.
The next thing to look at is th measuring board itself. In this photo, you will see my plumb line and sinker (8 lb test nylon and a 2 oz sinker) just slightly off the overhead of the "X" because even the smallest breath of air will move the sinker 1/8th inch or so. Panama Bates and I set the experiment up early in the morning in order to be assured that we would have windless conditions.
Now let's look at the results. Remember, we'll get into the calculation basis in a moment, but for now, here's the results at local "high noon" which by the book seems to be due about 1:23 or so, local time and which actually showed up about 5 minutes early if my lying eyes are to be believed.
Now, a word about this all-important measurement. Because the roof is so high from the measuring platform (which again we have meticulously leveled in order to assure that it is at 90 degrees to the plumb bob (level is perpendicular to vertical, right?)) we see that the shadow from the roof is "soft".
So we then place a small scrap of wood from the shop area which is just a bit thicker than the tape measure standing off the leveled platform.
Now here's the trick: You move the small piece of wood toward the sunlit area until you can just discern a shadow. This then where you would "sight" the measurement on the tape (although in this case, it's a bit less than 2 1/8th inches because the wood is a tiny bit high, so call it 2.1 inches off of the predicted length.
Data Sets and Methodology
We have two ways this can be done - with or without accounting for refraction of the atmosphere.
We can find the refraction indices at http://www.licha.de/AstroWeb/articles_fullsize.php3?iHowTo=7 I hope they won't mind if I borrow their refraction table:
|
Distance to Zenith in Degrees |
Refraction |
| 0 | 0' 00" |
| 10 | 0' 11" |
| 20 | 0' 22" |
| 30 | 0' 35" |
| 40 | 0' 51" |
| 50 | 1' 11" |
| 60 | 1' 45" |
| 70 | 2' 45" |
| 75 | 3' 42" |
| 80 | 5' 31" |
| 85 | 10' 15" |
| 88 | 19' 17" |
| 89 | 25' 36" |
| 90 | 36' 38" |
We must be precise here and rigorous and remember that if we apply refraction, it must be done to both sides of the equation. We will estimate that there are less than 10" of refraction (0.166 degree) at our observation point and the present zenith of June 16th
Calculation of the angles involved is tedious, unless of course you spend 3-minutes finding a calculator to do your calculations for you. It's at http://www.saltire.com/applets/triangles/tri2sia.htm
Next week Need the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer: 2.35 degrees North.
And the precise decimal position of our observation point: 31.92061 North by my GPS.
Calculations
Approximations begin by asking where should the sun be? Without refraction, we would expect the sun to be located at an angle equal to 90 degrees - (Local position minus tropic of Cancer).
Restated: 90- (31.92061 - 23.5) simplified to 90- 8.42061 = 81.579.
Now, let's use the calculator solve for 81.579
We know AC is the missing value
We have measured AB as 180.625
Angle BAC is 90 degrees (we were careful leveling, right?)
and we think Angle ABC should be 81.579
Our uncorrected measurement expected is 26.74 inches out from our plumb X we will find the shadow, as it shortens on June 21st to its shortest length of the year.
So here's were we run into trouble. The measured result was 2.1 inches short of that as you can see in the photo above.
In oher words, the sun's angle from vertical should be 8.42 (or a local hour angle of 81.579 at sidereal noon for navigation purists).
The Ugly Results
When we take the 26.74 inches predicted and subtract 2.1 inches, we get 24.64 inches. We can now work the calculator backward to figure out what the actual angle of the sun is:
Answer: 7.768 degrees. So we'll have to recheck our work and look for errors, which I think will be found.
Error in Sun Location
We now have two numbers that seem to describe how the sun is out of position by a small, but potentially important increment (especially if you've never had tornados like this year's). The error may be generalized as:
8.421 degrees predicts minus 7.768 actual = 0.653 degrees.
In other words - and this is a tough one to swallow I'll admit - the sun is about 2/3rd's of one degree NORTH of where it should be.
Refraction
I mentioned refraction. We could interpolate and make a correction for refraction - the tables are there if you want to take it on, but when we penciled it out, remember that refraction must be applied to both the predicted and the actual, so the delta (difference) between the observations is decreased by a miniscule amount
The Retest
Today (Thursday) I will reset everything and try again because my plumb line apparently moved slightly - which could account for some of the error. I've already found one interesting sidelight to all this - namely that 8 lb test nylon fishing line is about 3/16th's of an inch longer at 70 degrees than it is at 88 degrees over 180.625 inches.
Do It Yourself
We've given you the methodology and the techniques. Have at it yourself. We'd love to hear what your findings are when you run this experiment at various latitudes.
We think there's a pretty good chance that the odd weather we are seeing in the Midwest and maybe even tied in to the huge number of naval ships at sea, is tied in to the sun being not-where-it-should-be at this moment in time.
The write when you get rich -.and bon fortuna -guys ...