Solar Analemma over Trinity School at Greenlawn

The photo shows the sun in the sky over Trinity School Auditorium, recorded at the same time of day, over the course of a year. These forty-one solar images were made through a solar filter at 12:47 PM EST (± 5 sec.) while the camera was kept oriented in the same position on a tripod. The foreground image was taken from the same camera position without a solar filter near sunset, so the sun was out of view, and combined with the solar images. The tilt of the Earth’s axis results in a figure-eight pattern and the elliptical nature of the Earth’s orbit around the sun causes the asymmetry in the pattern. The figure at right shows the (rotated) solar images labeled with the date each image was taken.