Sailing Glossary - Term Pers sunshine recorder

A sunshine recorder of the type in which the time scale is supplied by the motion of the sun. The instrument, which is pointed at the celestial pole, consists of a hemispherical mirror mounted externally on the optical axis of a camera. The lens of the camera forms an image of the sun which is reflected by the hemispherical mirror so that as the sun moves across the sky, the image traces an arc of a circle on the photographic paper.