Log 14 Answer

ISETV Site: Log 14 Answer

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Number:	Log 14
Date:	1/10/91
Answer:	30 E, Equator?

This clue involves basic celestial navigation and time zone manipulation.

All I know is that during the visitation the sun was at its highest point in the sky for the day, and was at approximately a seventy degree angle with the ground. The sun made a great impact on me, for here at the beach it was exactly two in the morning, and completely dark.

Determining the longitude is possible with basic time zone math, which players had just done while solving the Time Zones clue. As noted in the log, it is approximately noon at the location of the visitation, because the sun was it its highest point in the sky for the day, while it is 2AM in Los Angeles. This information pinpoints the location at ten hours and ten time zones east of Los Angeles or about 30º east of Greenwich.

Determining the latitude requires a basic understanding of a noon curve and how the noon time position of the sun varies with the seasons. The log entry takes place on January 10, 1991. Three weeks earlier, at the winter solstice, the sun was directly overhead at 22.5º south of the equator. Likewise, at the equator the noontime position of the sun was (90º - 22.5º) = 67.5º just three weeks earlier. The curve for how the sun’s path travels over the earth is very flat near the solstice and accelerates rapidly towards the equinox, so at the time of the visitation things would not be significantly different. Therefore, since Trelix saw the sun at approximately 70º in her vision, then we know the solution must be fairly close to the equator.

With this log entry, the players receive a major hint at the overall structure of this clue as well the first piece of the transmitter. The excerpted log entry below explains the function of the map and how to build the code from this.

The code grows one segment with each Aphelion, and each segment is the last digit of the coordinate where the mothership touched down on that visitation. There must be fourteen segments of the code now, after this most recent visitation. Of course, the code is impossible to reconstruct without the coordinates, and those are recorded on the map, which is now long gone. And even the map is useless unless one knows the sites of all of the past visitations, and I have forgotten those. Perhaps my past log entries recorded that information, I cannot remember.

And so I will bury the last piece of the transmitter here along with my log entry. It can no longer possibly be of any use to me, and the other pieces were left behind long ago. Only after every piece is collected can the transmitter be reconstructed and activated.

Number	Date	Place	Code
Crash	8/23/56	?	n/a
Log #1	2/6/59	?	?
Log #2	7/22/61	?	?
Log #3	1/5/64	?	?
Log #4	6/20/66	?	?
Log #5	12/3/68	?	?
Log #6	5/19/71	?	?
Log #7	11/1/73	?	?
Log #8	4/16/76	?	?
Log #9	9/30/78	?	?
Log #10	3/15/81	?	?
Log #11	8/29/83	?	?
Log #12	2/11/86	?	?
Log #13	7/27/88	?	?
Log #14	1/10/91	30 E, Equator?	?
Log #15	6/25/93	Albania	?
Log #16	12/9/95	Tibet	?
Visitation	5/24/98	?	n/a