Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Later Sunsets!
Have you noticed that the sun is setting later than it did last week? Me neither, but by the end of the month the change should be more apparent. Actually, as measured in minutes, it happened only yesterday - the official sunset time yesterday was one minute later than it has been since December 4, (at least according to this site). I have tried and tried to wrap my brain around this idea - that the earliest sunset and latest sunrise are NOT on the winter solstice, but so far it hasn't stuck.
There are lots of web pages trying to explain it though. A very thorough presentation is here, but you have to be prepared to sit and read through it and do some mental exertion:
http://members.aol.com/jwholtz/analemma/analemma.htm
I found that page through this page, which has a few zillion links (some of which are obsolete):
http://www.wsanford.com/~wsanford/exo/sundials/shadows.html
2 Comments:
I have started to notice the later sunsets and am overjoyed!
Isn't it wonderful? I'm sitting here typing this at 5:10 pm, and it isn't even dark outside. Wow! And now we're getting earlier sunrises too.
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