Image of the world at the December solstice.

Introduction

When writing technical documentation for my APIs and libraries, I often start including all sorts of information on the concepts and physics that underpin them. At some point, when the pages get so long that no-one is ever going to actually read them, I have to take a step back and think about a better way forward. Thus, I sat down and extracted out a lot of the conceptual stuff and organised it into a series of new articles. I’ve got several more in the works, but thought that I would at least let people know about the one’s I have finished as they may be of some use.

New Articles

The new articles I recently added are as follows:

  • Sky Distribution
    Looks at the processes required to calculate the distribution of light over the skydome under different weather conditions to accurately account for the effects of shading and reflections in and around a building site.

  • Solar Position
    Discusses the algorithms and calculations required to determine the position of the Sun in the sky at any time, and gives links to a range of code and other resources available on the web.

  • Significant Latitudes
    Discusses a range of latitude lines on the Earth’s surface that have some solar significance, explaining why they are important and illustrating how.

  • Significant Days of the Year
    Discusses the cyclical nature of solar radiation and those days within the year that mark the changing of the seasons. This explains what the various solstices and equinoxes are and why they are important.

  • Significant Times of Day
    Explains the technical definitions of sunrise, sunset and twilight times, and why these may sometimes be at odds with our own perceptions of when those events occur.


Click here to comment on this page.