Dear Fabio, An interesting message...
> In Italy some sundials show the > written 'costante locale'... I find Italian gnomonic vocabulary great fun. There are technical terms which sound very good in Italian but sound very odd when directly translated into English. I especially enjoy 'Foro gnomonico' and 'Meridiana a camera oscura'. I share your dislike of 'costante locale'. This could be interpreted in many ways. Is it the height above sea level or the local latitude or something else? In English I often use the word 'offset' and this can be 'an angular offset' or 'a time offset' or 'a displacement offset' and for 'costante locale' I would usually write: the local longitude offset It helps that in England, the local reference meridian is Greenwich but to be more precise I would write: the longitude offset from the reference meridian for the local time zone >From where I am sitting: My longitude offset (from the Greenwich meridian) is one-eighth of a degree east or 30 seconds of time. 'Offset' is used for angles, time or distance. Frank Frank King Cambridge, U.K. --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial