NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day features an analemma, a composite image showing the Sun’s path over a year, taken over the Callanish Stones in Scotland. The image illustrates the effect of Earth’s axial tilt and orbit.
The featured analemma was created from images taken every few days at noon near the village of Callanish in the Outer Hebrides, UK. The foreground shows the Callanish Stones, a stone circle constructed around 2700 BC during the Bronze Age. It is currently unknown if the stones’ placement had astronomical significance.
The figure-8 shape of the analemma is caused by the tilt of the Earth’s axis and the ellipticity of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The Sun appears near the bottom of the image because it was taken near the December solstice. Equinoxes correspond to the middle points of the analemma, not the intersection. An equinox, when day and night are equal in length across the planet, will occur in two days, and is often celebrated as a change of season by many cultures.
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