The marked body is the Sun, at this minute: under your feet, as far down as the readout says. The map has taken the ground away. It sits in front of stars now, just as it does at noon, when its glare hides them. The line through it is the ecliptic, the track it walks against those stars once a year.
Twelve weeks, one night at a time. Each jump is one turn of the sky, 23 h 56 min, so the stars return to the same place and only the Sun moves: the camera holds it and the stars slide past. It goes east along the ecliptic about 1° a night, 360° in 365¼ days. If the run passes an equinox, watch it cross the celestial equator.
Now the other side of the sky. Where the ecliptic crosses the celestial equator on your meridian is the
March equinox point, in faint Pisces. Find it from
Alpheratz down through
Algenib, 14°, then 15.5° on. The Sun reaches it about 20 March, crossing the equator heading north.
These stars are up tonight because the Sun is on the far side of the Earth. It moves east about a degree a day, and the sky it hides moves with it: each star crosses your meridian
3 min 56 s earlier every night — two hours a month. About 20 March the Sun is 15.5° below
Algenib, and the Square is lost in its glare.
Read the equinox point's altitude as it crosses your meridian: 90° minus your latitude, north or south. That is how high the Sun stands at noon on the equinoxes — 49.3° from New York. The celestial equator is half above every horizon, so equinox days last a few minutes over 12 hours everywhere.
Low in the east-north-east is the top of the ecliptic, Dec +23.44°. The Sun is here about 21 June. Add that to the equinox figure: from New York, 49.3° + 23.4° = 72.7° at noon. North of the celestial equator, most of the Sun's daily circle is above a northern horizon: 15 h 06 min of daylight in New York.
Follow the ecliptic down towards the west-south-west, to its bottom: Dec −23.44°, in Sagittarius. The Sun is there about 21 December: 49.3° − 23.4° = 25.9° at noon from New York, and 9 h 15 min of daylight. South of the equator the two solstices swap places — December is the high, long-day one.
Those noons, watched: the Sun at local mean noon, one day at a time for a year. It climbs to the June height and sinks to December's, 47° lower, and the line it leaves loops into a figure-8, the analemma. Its height is the season; why it leans is a lesson of its own.
Now pull the figure-8 apart. Each noon keeps its height and moves along to its own date, and the loop opens into a wave: the June top, the December bottom and the equinox height halfway, all for your own sky. The height is the season, read off a calendar.
Back to tonight's Sun. Which side of the celestial equator is it on? That settles your season. On your own hemisphere's side, your days last more than 12 hours and the noon Sun stands higher than at an equinox; on the other side, the reverse. It changes sides twice a year, at the two crossings, and strays at most 23.44° from the line.