THE TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF RETIREMENT Today is the summer solstice; the day with the longest duration of daylight during the year in the Northern Hemisphere. This day the sun appears to travel directly over and along the Tropic of Cancer all the way around the world. That’s what the tropic boundaries are; the line of longitude where the sun is directly overhead at noon on the solstice (Tropic of Capricorn on the winter solstice, December 21 in the Southern Hemisphere.) So that means that a shadow at noon on this day will point directly toward the North Pole. The shadow will also be at its shortest because of the high angle of the sun. So I have been determined to get a picture of this event. Easy right? Nooooooo. First, to do it right you have to know where north is. Duh! Use a compass. Yeah, but the compass gives you magnetic north so you have to find the declination from true north for your locale. That would be 6 degrees, 17 minutes and 7 seconds for here this year. Ah, but noon is easy, huh? 1 PM because of daylight savings, right? Nope. True noon in Ft. Lauderdale is at 13: 22:30 and it changes every day! (That was news to me. I always thought that noon was noon.) By the way, Ft. Lauderdale is 187 miles north of the Tropic of Cancer (Key West is 76 miles.) So if you want to get a picture of the shadow pointing to true north at true noon and with the damned wind blowing, this is what you have to do. The compass is a Cammenga army lensatic model and the carpenter’s level is 24 inches long. My camera needs a new photographer. All this gives new meaning to the word “nooner”.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:06:38 +0000
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