Gordon Williamson: The Sun's surprising movement across the sky

The Sun's surprising movement across the sky

Suppose you placed a camera at a fixed position, took a picture of the sky at the same time every day for an entire year, and overlaid all of the photos on top of each other. What would the sun look like in that combined image? A stationary dot? A circular path? Neither. Oddly enough, it makes a ‘figure 8’ pattern, known as the Sun’s analemma. Gordon Williamson explains why. [Directed by TED-Ed, narrated by Addison Anderson, music by Carlos Palomares].

The Sun traces a striking figure eight, called the analemma, in the sky if photographed from the same spot at the same time every day for a year. This unique pattern emerges because Earth’s 23.4-degree tilt and elliptical orbit change the Sun’s apparent path and timing. The analemma’s shape is not just a curiosity but a visible record of the complex dance between our planet and its star. Early globes even featured this loop, helping people reconcile sundial time with mechanical clocks.