Celestial Motions, Ep. 4: A Year of Days

In this episode, we see an entire year (one day per week) of the Sun’s motion through the sky, from the point of the view of NYC, in the northern hemisphere. We show just the daytime hours and plot the position of the sun in an equirectangular 360 view* in the bottom panel. In the upper panel, we show the Earth as illuminated by the sun during these days. Notice how the northern hemisphere gets more and more direct sun during the Summer months and how that manifests in longer days in the bottom panel.
You can see how the path of the sun is either the highest or lowest at the two Solstice days (mid December and mid June). Also, on the equinoxes, the sun rises and and sets due East, and due West, respectively.
*Notes: The bottom panel maps the entire 360º view over Manhattan into a little rectangle. While there is certainly a lot of interesting discussion and math about how this happens, it’s not the point of this simulation. There are many ways to map a panorama view to a small screen, and each will have different distortions and obvious warping associated with it (try peeling an orange and then arranging the peel to fit into a rectangle if you want an idea of the problem). The point here is to show how the Sun’s motion changes.
The Sun’s positions (the dots in the background) are plotted every 15 minutes between sunrise and sunset.
Simulation Rendered with ‪@OpenSpaceProj‬
Scripting help from PyEphem ( pypi.org/project/ephem/ )
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#astronomy #nyc #nycskyline #manhattan #manhattanhenge #solarsystem #sunrise #scivis #science #visualization #earth #astro101 #daytime #solstice #equinox #python

[@HafiidzRex]

Everyone gangsta until the sun suddenly rise in west-

[@lovesamdao8850]

they r really in a bad drought

[@gnarled128]

This graphic goes week by week, it must have only been raining on other days of the week to maintain those sea levels

[@Robocoop-sj9xp]

Who 2024?

[@johnnym6700]

Nice graphics except we don't live on a spinning ball!

[@reasonandlogic1024]

Go back in your mom's basement for the sake of humanity

[@sadfriedgamer6648]

true we live on a spinning planet

[@AbuMaia01]

All evidence says we do. Why do you choose to deny reality?

[@caticane4425]

true we live on a spinning dinosaur

[@RozzmanLists]

The "nice graphic" depicts the real world accurately. That's why it confirms the ball shape of earth, the rotation around it's own axis and the eliptical path around the sun.