43° 31.52 S 172° 37.16 E - Sundial, Botanic Gardens, Christchurch, New Zealand. - Permanent Geographic Coordinates on Waymarking.com

This sundial in the centre of the rose garden has the dual purpose of being an orientation table for some of the major cities and features of the world, and a sundial for New Zealand Standard Time.

It was

        Erected to the Memory
             of the Late
          Thomas Stevenson
       of Papanui, Christchurch
         September 23rd 1954

and consists of a slate table with brass gnomon built on a granite column of inverted conical section. The whole placed on a raised granite step.

The slate table outer ring is marked with the hours in sun time. The next inner shows the months of the year with flowers and scroll-work, and the next with the sixteen cardinal points. The very innermost circle has the description and coordinates with the orientation and direction pointers round this.

The orientation table points to:

          Wellington       190
          New York         7210
          Chatham Islands  540
          Rio de Janeiro   7310
          London           11800
          Sydney           1330
          Tokyo            5830

The centre wording is:

Figures are distance in miles as the crow flies

and: This spot is in Lat 43° 31.52 S Long 172° 37.16 E

The instructions for the sundial are inscribed in part of the outer circle, they are:

To obtain New Zealand Standard Time 29½ minutes should be added to the time shown by the dial.

There are also two brass plaques at the base of the dial, one shows the month-by-month Equation of Time (EoT) in graphical form, the other is the EoT at 10day intervals throughout the year and the instruction:

       To calculate the time take the sundial reading
               plus or minus Equation of Time
      plus constant 30 minutes for longitude correction
          plus one hour if daylight saving applies.

Type of structure: Structure Difference between the post coordinates and your GPSr reading: 580m Reason for the coordinates: Not known, it's a memorial and centre-piece.

Visit Instructions:
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Date Logged Log   07/05/2015 waiiti20 visited it