The Solar Mount

The Samrat Yantra in Jaipur, India is the largest sundial ever built. Its gnomon is 73 ft. The sundial is part of the Jantar Mantar complex in Jaipur, India, one of five large astronomical observatories constructed out of stone by Jai Sing II between 1727 and 1734.

Mont Saint Michel sundial is an ambisious artistic attempt, to use the Mont Saint-Michel natural mounument to create the Biggest Sundial ever:

Mont Saint-Michel is a small rocky tidal island in Normandy, roughly one kilometre from the north coast of France. Rising from a hazy expanse of sand and waves, Mont Saint Michel appears like Man’s defiance of the elements and of time. A rock lost in a landscape smoothed by the wind. Suspended high on the rock, the abbey calls you to discover the wild ambition of its builders and of those who, since 708, had wanted to make this isolated spot a meeting place for all people.From the top, everything looks surprising: the prodigies of medieval architecture, the strength of nature, the light…

Laurent Maget, scientist at CNRS and an artist as well, attempt to grapple with the meaning of Mont Saint Michel took place when he secured funding for a grandiose project.

The french army were drafted in to erect 600 one metre square reflective aluminium plates on scaffolding bases, to form the shapes of Roman numerals marching in a straight line across the sands at the foot of the Mont. For the three weeks of the autumn equinox, these figures were swept by the shadow of the 150 foot spire of the abbey atop the Mont, which thus became the pointer of a sundial, its shadow three quarters of a mile long.

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