In this picture I've got this scrap piece of 2x12” board tacked to a tall tree stump. There are 3 nails sticking up to act as temporary test “styles”; 1 short nail sticking up perpendicular to the surface and 2 others bent over to 34 degrees (my locations latitude). What look like shadows were actually penciled in yesterday at 12:06 when the sun was out, but this picture was taken today with no direct sun because of rain clouds.
So I figured I could just partition the board's surface into equal quadrants by drawing perpendicular lines for North, East, South and West, tack one nail down into the stump and then rotate the board until the sun's shadows came into synchronized alignment. But it's not that simple. The shadows yesterday looked 1 hour off, as if it were 11:00 AM; no matter how I rotated the board. Friggin DST (Daylight Savings Time) perhaps ?
*In the U.S. this year congress decreed that friggin DST should begin 11 days before the Vernal (or Spring) Equinox and will stop friggin DST about 41 days after the Autumnal Equinox [Nov/3/2019 vs Sept/21-23/2019]. But political decisions like this should not influence GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).
* Then I ran across this video yesterday - Calculating Noon Sun Angle. Am I wrong to expect the stylus (sharp edge of shadow and the gnomon supporting it) of a sundial to cast its smallest shadow at high noon ? My Zenith angle looks like 10.5 degrees and my NSA equals 79.5 degrees which seems to be about right but is just adding to my confusion.
