Celestial Dotmatrix

Latest revision as of 11:38, 9 July 2010

The sun appears in many positions in the sky... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_path

a snapshot of them over a year, at the same time of day, reveals the analemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma http://www.analemma.de/english/analem.html

but what if you snapshotted different points in the sunpath over the year? You could write a word. (and it should only take six months maximum! ;) The effect would be that of a dot-matrix font.

So, what should such a celestial dotmatrix "printer" write as it's first message?

"hello, world", of course! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_world_program

(in fact, you'd only need 7 days (spread over 6 months) to accomplish this, based on a 7x5 font...  :) (multiple exposures per day)

...if you wanted to cheat, you could just record a whole year (say: photo every 5 minutes), and then choose the photos you wanted. ...otoh, doing it 100% in film would be true dedication! =)

more links

• http://helpmyphysics.co.uk/wordpress/?p=276
• http://www.pinholephotography.org/Solargraph%20instructions.htm
• http://www.pinholephotography.org/
• http://www.zullophoto.com/sub_analemmaphoto.html

Note: the celestial dotmatrix should not be in any way confused with a celestial dominatrix. Also, analemma should always be read as one word!