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Suffolk Church has an equinotial lighting effect
by Simon at 12:03 27/02/09 (Blogs::Simon)
An interesting story here about an equinotial lighting effect in a Suffolk church that has recently been noticed.
Weather permitting, for just four minutes on March 20 a beam of evening sunlight will filter through a small window at Barsham Church, near Beccles, and bathe a sculpture of Christ on the Cross in a golden light.

The wonderful thing about this kind of alignment is that it's independent of the calendar date and relates purely to the Earth/Sun's position.

Although precession will cause the equinoxes and solstices to move round any particular civil calendar (unless periodically adjusted), an equinox is an equinox and a solstice is a solstice.

By the by, I had a visualisation epiphanette last night about precession so that I now realise that half a cycle ago the Summer Solstice would have happened around perihelion rather than near aphelion as it does in our age.

All I've got to do now is be able to visualise the separate precession of Earth's orbital semi-major axis, the changing angle of obliquity of the ecliptic plus nutation and libration in my head and I'll be all set :-)
--
simon

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