Tag: Sunlight
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Manhattanhenge for every British town
On which days does the sun set straight down your street? I worked it out for 37,224 straight streets in 377 UK towns and cities, with the hills on the skyline. 1,072 line up with a solstice, about as many as chance would give, and Midsummer Boulevard in Milton Keynes misses midsummer.
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Which way do cricket pitches face?
The old advice says a cricket pitch should run north to south, out of the evening sun. I measured every cricket pitch in OpenStreetMap and every sports pitch in the UK: 55% of cricket strips follow the rule, tennis courts mostly do, and football pitches point anywhere.
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Which way do the UK’s churches face? Not towards their saint’s sunrise
I measured the axes of 32,007 churches from OpenStreetMap. Old churches face east, Victorian ones often face the street, and the old idea that churches point at sunrise on their patron saint’s day fails: midsummer and midwinter saints’ churches face the same way.
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Britain’s sunless valleys
On the shortest day the sun barely clears the horizon, and hills hide it. I drew the winter sun across the skyline of every town and village in the UK: 64 get no direct sun at all on 21 December, and Kinlochleven goes 109 days without it.
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Where the sun sets into the sea: sea sunsets and sunrises at the beaches of Britain and Ireland
I traced the Sun’s path from 1,717 beaches in Britain and Ireland, day by day: 47% see the Sun set into open sea on some day of the year, only 52 every day, and islands like Arran and Lundy take a bite out of the year.
