Project Would Recreate Roman Monument

[Viggen]

When the autumnal equinox peaks at 3:23 p.m. (PDT) on Thursday, Sept. 22, a University of Oregon team working to reconstruct one of the world's most famous solar clocks will savor - and record - the moment by making another observation at a test site on campus.

 

Historian John Nicols and physicist Robert Zimmerman have joined with architects James Tice and Virginia Cartwright to lead a group of scholars and students seeking to create a replica of the Horologium / Solarium of Augustus, a 60-foot granite obelisk erected at Heliopolis in the seventh century B.C. by Psammetichus II and brought to Rome by Augustus in 10 B.C. The obelisk was to be used as the "gnomon" (the staff against which the shadow is projected from the sun to the ground) of a new solar calendar and "clock."

 

full article at PhysOrg