Tony Hull, Adjunct Professor of Physics & Astronomy at UNM. The solar and lunar cycles, so meaningful to the astronomers of old, were writ upon the landscape in myriad ways, and we can continue this long tradition in new ways today, for ourselves, to deepen the relation we have to the larger sphere of the cosmos. Tony shares the history of The Gnomon, a simple yet profound tool to track the sun’s journey across the sky on the Solstice and Equinox, that points to the celestial cardinal directions. This simple yet profound tool reveals the cardinal directions, and can explain how ancient sites are so accurately aligned, long before the magnetic compass.
Tony Hull is the architect of a NASA study for a large space observatory to continue research in ultraviolet astrophysics. He led the team of 60 that polished the mirrors of the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope, and served as NASA technologist for Terrestrial Planet Finder, a spaceborne mission for direct imaging of exoplanets.