The shape at different latitudes It follows from the principle of the analemmatic dial explained above that the shape of the dial depends on latitude. Moving to the poles, the date line shrinks and the minor axis of the ellipse increases. On the tropics the two are equal. The examples below show how the shape comes out at various latitudes. They are constructed for the Northern hemisphere.
Local noon is at the top.
The 'functional' hour points are filled with red, the others with blue. The date line is divided into the zodiacal months for clarity. The diamond-shaped points are the foci of the ellipse. In addition, in summer you have to stand almost on the ellipse. This makes reading the dial very inaccurate.