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I'm teaching a one-day class this Saturday: 

Sundials: It's All about Time
Build your own sundial as we learn about time in all its variations. In this workshop, participants will learn how to build a basic sundial, how to adjust backyard sundials, and how to read the time of day just by observing the Sun in the sky. We'll discuss local apparent time, or "sundial time", and its (sometimes distant) connection to the time we read on our clocks. We'll see how the mysterious-sounding "equation of time" connects the two. And we'll trace the strange history of modern time zones, daylight saving time, sidereal time, mean time, leap days, and even leap seconds. Throughout we'll connect modern time-keeping with maritime history, and we'll see how traditional celestial navigators depended on time and used sextants as sundials at sea to find their longitude anywhere on Earth.

• Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT. Saturday, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm.
• Cost (subject to change): $50 ($45 for members of Mystic Seaport)
• Register for this class by phoning the Reservations desk at Mystic Seaport Museum: 860.572.5322, press 1 at the prompt.

There's still time to sign up and seats available! By the way, we're scheduled for October 31 because the end of the class on Saturday is less than twelve hours before the switch back to standard time this year. It's "fall back" time...

Frank Reed
4h 45m 28s west of the Prime Meridian

PS: Amazing analemma photo captured by Dennis DiCicco thirty years ago... when this was very hard to do.

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