Comments on: The earliest sunset

By: Marisa

Marisa — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 23:09:27 +0000

Rufus:

If you look at a time zone map you can see all kinds of anomalies. E.g., France and Spain are mostly the same longitude as the British Isles but is on the same time zone as the rest of Western Europe. Ergo, it’s effectively on DST for 1/3 of the year and double DST for 2/3.

By: Bryan Lovely

Bryan Lovely — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 06:54:33 +0000

Griffin —

No kidding about the gloom. I’ve been knocking off work early at 3:30* to go for my walk and half the time the streetlights are already on when I start.

* (I check in when I get back, promise! Okay, not really. The rest of my team is on the East Coast, so they’re long gone already.)

By: Rufus T. Firefly

Rufus T. Firefly — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 03:31:53 +0000

Daniel Boorstin’s, “The Discoverers” includes a wonderful account of man’s history attempting to divide the day into regular intervals and build devices to accurately measure those intervals. He also gives a great account of the chase to capture the huge cash reward of the Longitude Prize: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=924e838ba3734e0b9b928a3610b24a87

By: Aggie

Aggie — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 03:31:13 +0000

I remember when I discovered this unusual disconnect between earliest sunset/shortest day. First I went to the almanac to try to make sense of it, but that was just timetables. It took a little research to understand it fully, thanks for sharing this with everybody. Darn celestial mechanics!

Weird how the days pass differently too. I remember the first time I worked on the equator was in high summer – I had come from growing up in the north where it was light until almost midnight. On the equator, you can count the twilight in minutes. It’s more, lights on, lights off. Took some getting used to.

By: Zaphod

Zaphod — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 01:31:29 +0000

Oligarchs probably know more about the Analemma than the rest of us:

https://quillandpad.com/2021/05/09/equation-of-time-eot-what-is-it-and-whats-the-attraction/

EOT complications are a big thing in haute horlogerie.

http://www.danielslondon.com/daniels-watches/the-space-traveller/

By: Mary Catelli

Mary Catelli — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 01:11:43 +0000

The fun thing with true solar noon is that if you try to match your local noon to it you don’t end up with a twenty-four hour day.

Clockmakers took to mean solar time as soon as they could make something precise enough.

By: Rufus T. Firefly

Rufus T. Firefly — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 00:39:11 +0000

I’ve said this before, and it’s no insult to anyone, there are plenty of basic, fundamental things necessary for life on Earth that I am clueless on (how to grow food and hunt, for example), but I’ll bet less than 5% of people on Earth know it’s the Earth’s tilt on its axis that gives us non-equatorial dwellers seasonal changes. The most common answer I get when I ask folks is: distance from the Sun. It’s not true, but that at least implies they know the Earth’s orbit about the Sun is an ellipse and not a circle. And it implies they know the Earth orbits the Sun, which is also a good sign.

By: Zaphod

Zaphod — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 23:20:57 +0000

We should all just live on or near the equator. It simplifies everything greatly. It’s either very wet and hot or humid and hot. Sun is either up or down. No shillyshallying about it.

By: Skip

Skip — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 21:31:09 +0000

Went to Edinburgh Scotland on a New Years trip while in England, seemed to be barely 6 hours of daylight

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 21:04:12 +0000

Five time zones in one country? That’s carrying communism way too far — no surprise, I guess.

India covers two time zones and compromises by setting its time at the half-hour in between the two. So when we lived there we were 10.5 hours ahead of the eastern US.