Year 2004

Work of our members

Horizontal sundial
Bilthoven MM

Eventually I decided to place a sundial at the most suitable place, concerning the number of sun hours. In summer, it is useful for a number of hours each day, but in winter hardly.

It is a horizontal sundial on a concrete pillar of 60 cm high. The sundial is made of Comblanchien, slightly red veined, with a diameter of 50 cm and a thickness of 5 cm.
There are hour lines for every half hour; Roman numerals indicate the hours. The sundial reads local apparent time.
There are also three date lines: for the summer and winter solstice, and for the equinoxes.
The heading on the sundial reads BILTHOVEN MM, where MM stands for the millennium year 2000 in which the sundial was made.

Mrs. San Hop carved the stone. She chose to cut away the ground between the hour lines, date lines and text, as a result of which a beautiful relief arises.
The hour figures were hewn into the rim.

The shadow caster is bronze-coloured brass circle sector of 3 mm thickness. The straight sides are 210 mm long.
It shows two equation-of-time graphs; on the East side for the first six-month period and on the West side for the second six-month period.
The style of the gnomon has a notch in it as an indicator for use with the date lines.