NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Automated Sun detector
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2007 Dec 09, 14:56 +0000
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2007 Dec 09, 14:56 +0000
Richard wrote [NavList 4269] >About fifty years ago I had a summer job at an agricultural research >station. One apparatus was basically a crystal ball on a stand, "burning" >a path for the day on a tilted half cylinder of paper. I think the paper >automatically notched upward each night . . . but it has been quite a long >time ago for all the details. Cloudy sky didn't make a good mark, but >bright sun was clearly evident. Seemed like a simple way to get the >number of sunshine hours at a given location. The Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder to which Richard refers was invented back in 1835 and is still on the standard list of meteorology equipment. Brand new, they cost some thousands of dollars and pretty much the same in pounds. But glass balls of a good size can be had at a reasonable price, see http://www.mineralcraft.com/acatalog/Glass_Spheres.html and the special card on which the sunshine hours are recorded can be obtained from http://www.fairmountweather.com/products_bottom.php?cat=3&pid=15 A frame to hold it all together should make a nice little project. I think Mike could probably have his very own automated sun detector with change out of thirty quid! Geoffrey Kolbe --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com To , send email to NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---