In Fact, Only Four Days In A Year Do
The Sun And The Place Where The Sun Ought To Be Happen To Coincide.
The Remaining 361 Days The Sun Is Pothering Around All Over The
Shop.
Man, being more perfect than the sun, makes a clock that
keeps regular time.
Also, he calculates how far the sun is ahead of
its schedule or behind. The difference between the sun's position
and the position where the sun ought to be if it were a decent,
self-respecting sun, man calls the Equation of Time. Thus, the
navigator endeavouring to find his ship's position on the sea, looks
in his chronometer to see where precisely the sun ought to be
according to the Greenwich custodian of the sun. Then to that
location he applies the Equation of Time and finds out where the sun
ought to be and isn't. This latter location, along with several
other locations, enables him to find out what the man from Kansas
demanded to know some years ago.
The Snark sailed from Fiji on Saturday, June 6, and the next day,
Sunday, on the wide ocean, out of sight of land, I proceeded to
endeavour to find out my position by a chronometer sight for
longitude and by a meridian observation for latitude. The
chronometer sight was taken in the morning when the sun was some 21
degrees above the horizon. I looked in the Nautical Almanac and
found that on that very day, June 7, the sun was behind time 1
minute and 26 seconds, and that it was catching up at a rate of
14.67 seconds per hour.
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