ND Analemma: One Year of the Sun and the Golden Dome.

The photo shows the sun in the sky over the Golden Dome at the University of Notre Dame, recorded at the same time of day during the course of a year. These forty-one solar images were made through a solar filter at 10:07 AM EST (± 5 sec.) while the camera was kept oriented in the same position on a tripod. The foreground image was first 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, known as the solar analemma. The figure below shows the (rotated) solar images labeled with the day of the year each image was taken.