I've been meaning to get back in the habit of doing long urban hikes on the weekends, so I'm using that as an excuse to do the Seattle sundial trail (http://sundials.co/~seattle.htm).
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Next stop, a really fun wall dial at Olympic View Elementary School. The end of the gnomon has a set of rings which cast a circle on the wall, which will pass through one of the ceramic disks on the birthday of the student who made it! Very neat, and reasonably accurate accounting for DST.
Appropriately, the last time I was here was for a community planning meeting for the pedestrian bridge over I-5 that I crossed on the way over.
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And our last stop for the day at University Prep, a really elegant interactive pillar dial. The handle lets you position the gnomon correctly, though I was in a bit of a rush to catch a bus.
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I'm back on the trail today, at least until someone gets back to me about a bike I might be buying. We start at Cowen Park with this installation of a dramatic (but otherwise very basic) horizontal sundial next to a playground.
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Sadly, the class of 1912 sundial next to Drumheller Fountain is missing. But the view in the opposite direction is pretty good!
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This is, to my mind, the most iconic sundial in Seattle. It's on the side of the Physics and Astronomy Building (PAB) in the southwestern corner of UW campus, right above the rail trail which invented the entire concept of rail trails, the Burke-Gilman.
If it looks a bit similar to some of the others I've been visiting, it's because most of them were designed by the same guy, an astronomy professor who used to work in this building!
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I need to come back sometime closer to solar noon, but this discrete little installation at the Montlake Library is a skylight aperture sundial, marking noon on the carpet below.
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I had an errand in the area, so I was able to stop by the Montlake Library at solar noon, as marked when the orange disk lines up with the dots in the floor. (Ignore the shadow line in the disk itself.)
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Back on the trail today, walking up to Capitol Hill from the U-Dist to find this little wall dial. It's notable for being the oldest extant dial in Seattle, and being on a mansion on the national historic places register, but the design itself is pretty mid.
Probably heading back to the shop after this one, though, as some rain is picking up.
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More sundial trekking today, first to the top of the prettiest not-quite-a-Superfund site around, Gas Work Park. This is a fun, if visually cluttered analemmatic sundial, where you serve as the gnomon as long as you stand in the right place (Most people weren't, as far as I could see, probably because it's so visually cluttered.) It also serves as a canonically great place to fly a kite and get a great view of downtown.
Image descs aren't working on my app atm, so:
A complicated art installation set into a large concrete pad at the top of a grassy hill, made of textured/colored concrete and cast bronze inserts.
Fish's shadow pointing just shy of the 2 (PST) marker, taken at 3:11 (PDT).
A gorgeous view of downtown Seattle across Lake Union on a cloudless day. Boats are out on the lake, people are picnicking on the side of the grassy hill stretching down to the water, and the Space Needle is visible to the right.
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The second and final dial of the day, this one in the far less toxic (to the best of my knowledge) Webster Park in Ballard. A nice little bronze equatorial that really makes its alignment with the Earth's axis explicit. This makes about 12 km for the day, and I won't deny I'm feeling it a bit in my right hip. Time to head home and work on the script for the custom waffle plate video.
