The Sun in Santa Maria Novella

Area:	Museum
Start:	7 March 2008
End:	25 March 2008
Description:	On the initiative of IMSS, Opera per Santa Maria Novella, Istituto Geografico Militare and thanks to the contribution of the Provincia di Firenze, on March 7 and 25, 2008 a meridian line for the observation of the Sun's passage was placed on the floor of Santa Maria Novella's Cathedral. Between 1572 and 1575 Egnazio Danti, cosmographer for the Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, installed three astronomical instruments on the façade of Santa Maria Novella: a large quadrant with sundials, an equinoctial armillary and a gnomonic hole for a camera obscura meridian, with the aim of reforming the Julian calendar by favouring new astronomical calculations. Danti constructed the gnomon, but he did not succeed in carrying out the meridian line on the cathedral floor. After more than four hundred years, for the first time, the ancient instruments conceived by the famous cosmographer enabled the direct observation of the Sun's passage.
Link:	www.imss.fi.it/news/iosservazione_smn.html

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