The what?

analemma (n.) -
1. a scale shaped like the figure 8, showing the declination of the sun and the equation of time for each day of the year.
- dictionary.com

Oh, so helpful! (troll)

Okay, maybe not that helpful––the analemma can be used to describe the path any celstial body traces through its orbital period, not just the sun. And it isn’t always a figure 8 depending on your latitude, the time of day at which you choose to measure, and which body you’re tracking.

But mostly, analemmas refer to the sun. Like this one!


Since I’m normalizing the altitude and azimuth axes to a fixed proportion, they don’t really deviate much year-to-year. But it’s a fun way to represent an annual timeline for chronological data.

Is it more apparent than a straight line? No. But it’s a lot less boring :D January 1 is somewhere on the bottom left, I thought of labeling it, but that seems like it would conflict with the metaphor of continuity you get with the Möbian curve of the analemma.

If you check out the Timeline Of Contents, you’ll see what I mean. Since each point along the analemma corresponds to an amount of time traversed since New Year’s Day, you can map an event to the line!

For a much more informed reading, check out this guy. And maybe look for math regarding lemniscates.

For a less informed application, check out the git repo I set up for the Timeline Of Contents widget. It’s not self-executing, but it should operate in a pretty stand-alone fashion from any other front-end things you have going on.