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Subject:
Sundial accuracy over extended periods
Category: Science > Astronomy Asked by: jim87-ga List Price: $15.00 |
Posted:
17 May 2003 00:17 PDT
Expires: 16 Jun 2003 00:17 PDT Question ID: 204961 |
I live in Ireland and have a horizontal sundial with its gnomon correctly set up i.e. it is accurately aligned along a true north south line and it makes an angle to the horizontal equal to my latitude. My sundial agrees precisely with clock time when I make an allowance for the equation of time and my longitude. On the assumption that the sundial remains undisturbed in my garden in the future, what will happen to its accuracy in one thousand, ten thousand, one million, ten million years? Presumably tectonic plate movements will have an effect. What about celestial movements? |
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There is no answer at this time. |
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Subject:
Re: Sundial accuracy over extended periods
From: robertskelton-ga on 17 May 2003 01:11 PDT |
I believe the biggest factor will be the precession of the equinoxes, which will cause long-term inaccuracy, with a cycle of 26,000 years. http://www.crystalinks.com/precession.html This is the same thing that causes the Tropic of Capricorn to move 14 meters north per year. I could not find one mention of how this would affect sundials online, so I could be wrong... |
Subject:
Re: Sundial accuracy over extended periods
From: hlabadie-ga on 17 May 2003 07:15 PDT |
A sundial is concerned only with the rotation of the Earth on its axis with respect to a fixed object in the sky, the Sun, and give apparent time. Clocks keep mean time, a fictitious time measure based on a mean Sun. The difference in times requires correction, as you note. The Earth's rotational speed has been slowing since the formation of the planet. The length of a day, therefore, has been increasing over geological time. Recently, the length of a day has been increasing by roughly 2 milliseconds per day. A leap second is accordingly added to the year approximately every 500 days. If you want calculations based on that, they can be provided, but the speed of the Earth's rotation can vary with atmospheric conditions, and other factors make it impossible to predict exactly how much variance will occur. hlabadie-ga |
Subject:
Re: Sundial accuracy over extended periods
From: racecar-ga on 18 May 2003 17:49 PDT |
hlabadie-- If a leap second is added to the year every 500 days, that means length of day is increasing by about 5 microseconds per day, not 2 milliseconds. |
Subject:
Re: Sundial accuracy over extended periods
From: hlabadie-ga on 18 May 2003 21:15 PDT |
United States Naval Observatory Leap Seconds http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/leapsec.html "This scenario is analogous to that encountered with the leap second. The difference is that instead of setting the clock that is running slow, we choose to set the clock that is keeping a uniform, precise time. The reason for this is that we can change the time on an atomic clock, while it is not possible to alter the Earth's rotational speed to match the atomic clocks! Currently the Earth runs slow at roughly 2 milliseconds per day. After 500 days, the difference between the Earth rotation time and the atomic time would be 1 second. Instead of allowing this to happen, a leap second is inserted to bring the two times closer together." hlabadie-ga |
Subject:
Re: Sundial accuracy over extended periods
From: racecar-ga on 19 May 2003 12:15 PDT |
hlabadie-- This quote is correct, but you have misinterpreted it. Yes, the earth 'runs slow' to the tune of 2 milliseconds per day. That is, rather than 86400 seconds in a mean solar day, there are about 86400.002. This is very different from your statement that "length of day has been increasing by two milliseconds per day". That would mean that tomorrow, the lenght of the day would be 86400.004 sec, and the day after that, 86400.006 sec. In reality it has taken 180 years for the lenght of a day to increase from 86400 to 86400.002 seconds. The leap second which is added every 500 days or so is to make up for the fact that each day is .002 sec too long, it's not there because the days are getting longer by .002 sec each day. There is an excellent explanation of this at the very link you posted. Here's an excerpt: Confusion sometimes arises over the misconception that the regular insertion of leap seconds every few years indicates that the Earth should stop rotating within a few millennia. The confusion arises because some mistake leap seconds for a measure of the rate at which the Earth is slowing. The 1 second increments are, however, indications of the accumulated difference in time between the two systems. (Also, it is important to note that the current difference in the length of day from 86,400 seconds is the accumulation over nearly two centuries, not just the previous year.) As an example, the situation is similar to what would happen if a person owned a watch that lost 2 seconds per day. If it were set to a perfect clock today, the watch would be found to be slow by 2 seconds tomorrow. At the end of a month, the watch will be roughly a minute in error (30 days of 2 second error accumulated each day). The person would then find it convenient to reset the watch by one minute to have the correct time again. |
Subject:
Re: Sundial accuracy over extended periods
From: hlabadie-ga on 19 May 2003 12:43 PDT |
The actual rate of deceleration is on average 1.4 milliseconds per day per century. hlabadie-ga |
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