January 27, 2005
MIThenge
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In early November & late January MIT has a little local astronomical phenominon known as MIThenge, when the sun shines directly down the 825-foot infinite corridor that forms the spine of main campus. This year's convergence starts at around 4:49pm EST for the next few days.
I always loved this little architectural Easter egg when I was a student, but according to the MIT News Office the phenominon is likely by accident rather than design:
Posted by bug to Science at January 27, 2005 1:28 PM | TrackBackHistorical data suggests that the solar alignment was not intended by the buildings' architects, who were more concerned with the view of the Charles River. According to a recent article in Sky & Telescope magazine, the phenomenon was noticed and publicized in the 1970s by Thomas K. Norton, a research affiliate in architecture. Students at the time did some calculations as part of a class project, and posters were put up around campus advertising a "sun set celebration."
I've been playing with MIThenge predictions for the last year or more, and I've come to believe that there's an error in the posted figures for the azimuth of the corridor. This leads to up to a 2-day error in the predictions.
The upshot of this is that you can probably still get a peek at (part of) the sun on Feb. 1, if you observe from the corner of the hallway. Looking west toward the sun, you'll want to be in the bottom left corner of the stairwell on the third floor.
For more about the predictions, historical analysis of anomalous photographs, moon predictions, and more, I have improved predictions at:
http://futureboy.homeip.net/frinkdocs/LL4.html#MIThengePredictions
including programs (written in my programming language Frink:
http://futureboy.homeip.net/frinkdocs/
Posted by: Alan Eliasen at January 31, 2005 8:51 PM