Sunsets get later from now until June 28
FROM TODAY'S PRINT EDITIONS:
Cheer up! Your days will soon brighten – at least in the afternoon. Last night witnessed the earliest sunset of the year, at 4:43 p.m. EST in Baltimore. From today, our afternoons will begin to get longer until the latest sunset, at 8:37 p.m. EDT, June 28.
We’re not fully over the hump. Sunrises will continue to get later until Jan. 4. And total daylight hours will continue to dwindle until the advance of dusk outpaces that of the dawn, on Dec. 21 - the winter solstice.
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(SUN PHOTO: Karl Merton Ferron, February 2003)
Posted by Frank Roylance at 5:00 AM | Permalink
| Comments (2)
Categories: From the Sun's print edition, Sky Notes
Categories: From the Sun's print edition, Sky Notes
Comments
It was a very cold 11F here in northern Carroll County. Much colder than the NWS forecast for this morning.
FR: Clear skies, calm winds and loads of radiational cooling. We got down to 17 on the WeatherDeck in Cockeysville this morning. It was 19 at BWI, and 24 at The Sun's station downtown.
Posted by: Chris Smolinski | December 9, 2010 8:43 AM
frank,
i always wondered why the 2 week difference from earliest sunset to latest sunrise from the winter solstice, but only a one week difference for the earliest sunrise and the latest sunset from the summer solstice? is it latitude? earth's elliptical orbit?
FR: Both. Latitude determines the date of the earliest sunset and latest sunrise. The dates we use here are those for 40 degrees North (a bit north of Baltimore, but close enough). The farther north you go, the closer to the solstice those dates become. The difference in the spread between the extremes of sunrise and sunset and the two solstices is a function of both the tilt in the Earth's axis and the eccentricity of its orbit - the fact that the orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle with the sun at the center. Any further explanation and both our heads would explode.
Posted by: steve ward | December 11, 2010 5:07 PM