This project is sunny-side up

Try this for your list of improbable causes: Seattle as the sundial capital of North America.

This, for a city that averages 227 cloudy days a year. If you Google "Seattle and rain," 11.8 million results come up.

But, actually, among sundial fans worldwide — not surprisingly, a small but passionate group — the Seattle area already is known for sundials in public places.

We've got 26 of them "worth visiting" in the Seattle area, says Woody Sullivan, a professor in the University of Washington's Astronomy Department.

If Sullivan fulfills his dream, sometime in the next few years he can proudly say that when you're talking North American sundials, you're talking Seattle.

That's not bad for a town that doesn't have centuries of history, as do European cities in which, through about 1800 when reasonably priced clocks and watches became available, sundials were commonly used to tell time.

Go to the British Web site, sundials.co.uk, and you'll find a Seattle Sundial Trail.

So what if we have lots of clouds lots of the time?

"That's all the more reason we need sundials," Sullivan says. "When we do have sun, let's celebrate!"

It is Sullivan who has been responsible for helping create half of those 26 public sundials in the Seattle area, working with architects and artists.

It is Sullivan who goes to schools and talks to kids, showing them how to make a sundial from a Diamond matchbox and a stick.

It is Sullivan who in 1998 hosted in Seattle the North American Sundial Society.

True, attendance at such events is three dozen or so — but the passion!

"A sundial is my little revolt," Sullivan says. "I don't like what's happening in our society. It's rush, rush, hurry up, hurry up."

There is nothing rushed about a sundial.

The shadows ... just ... inch ... along.

As a motto on a French sundial points out (sundials usually have a motto) the benefits of taking time slowly: "Every hour injures, the last one kills."

Sullivan's fascination with sundials also has taken his work to Mars — literally.

He was tapped to design the two sundials used by the Mars Exploration Rovers that landed there in January 2004 and are still roving, even though their planned life was three months.

That was at the suggestion of Bill Nye the Science Guy, who had visited with the Mars exploration scientists and suggested what now is known as the MarsDial.

Nye is yet another sundial enthusiast.

Now, anyone can go to marsrovers.nasa.gov, make their way to "raw images," and see literally thousands of pictures of the little 2.3-ounce gizmos at work.

Nye has deep Seattle connections, having gotten his television start here. He still has an office in Seattle, even though he lives in Studio City, Calif.

When hearing Nye or Sullivan explain their passion about sundials, there is certain quirkiness that can't help but pop up.

"Everything that's outside should really be made into a sundial — lampposts, every car antenna, every flagpole, every tombstone," Nye says. "They're so beautiful and elegant."

Says Nye about his friend's quest to make Seattle the North American capital of sundials, "If there's anybody who can do it, it's him."

Nye's interest in sundials began with his late father, Edwin, an advertising salesman.

He remembers helping his dad in the mid-1960s market on Delaware beaches (Nye grew up in the Washington area) something called a "Sandial," basically a piece of wood with a stick.

Nye remembers that on drives with his dad, "Whenever he saw a sundial, he'd pull over and take pictures."

Nye later compiled the photos in a book of which six copies were made. He sent one of them to Sullivan.

Sullivan became fascinated by sundials two decades ago, when an architecture firm called him because a client wanted one in his home.

The more the professor researched sundials, the more his fascination grew.

Sundials go back to primitive man figuring out that the sun always reached the highest point above the same feature on the landscape.

Sullivan likes that sundials are so low-tech.

Because of his field of study, Sullivan obviously deals with sophisticated instruments.

But that doesn't mean he's conceded his life to them.

Sullivan, 64, doesn't have a cellphone. At home, there is no voice mail. He does check his e-mail, though.

At his Phinney Ridge home, the garage he has converted into an office has an inch-square mirror outside that points sunlight spots to the ceiling inside. Sullivan has been noting with a pencil the specific date and hour of some 200 spots.

He figures he'll do this for another year, until he has a garage version of the famous Palazzo Spada in Rome, a 17th-century building in which a mirror in a central window reflects sun onto the ceiling to show the time.

A good sundial, Sullivan says, is accurate to better than a minute, after which the shadow line gets fuzzy. His question: Isn't that suitable for most occasions?

On a sunny Seattle day, of which Sunday was one of them, Sullivan says, why not do a local sundial tour?

The most-visited one, because it's atop a hill at Gasworks Park, is a huge, 25-foot sundial.

It is a sundial that is cluttered with a lot of artwork, and some visitors, like Tim Hattori, 27, a Boston software engineer, don't realize that's what they're looking at.

He was there recently on the type of Seattle summer day that is full of dark clouds and wind.

"Oh, yeah, it's a sundial," Hattori said, looking at the circular device, full of puddles from a recent shower.

Many of the public sundials here have been built since the mid-1990s, when they experienced a revival of sorts.

There is another huge sundial, built in 1999, on the brick side of Olympic View Elementary, in which, as the day wears on, the shadow of an eagle changes as it lands on the hour mark.

And there is fully functional sundial atop a 16- by 8-foot picnic table, built in 2001, at Les Gove Park in Auburn.

It's motto: "Time to eat!"

Seattle has always seemed to attract individuals with unusual dreams.

"A sundial places you in your cosmic situation," Sullivan says. "It connects you. It tells you, 'The cosmos will keep going long after I'm gone.' "

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com