The Shortest Day, Sunrise and Sunset.

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December 21^st, 2018 is the shortest day of the year, at least in the UK, located in the Northern hemisphere of our planet.

So does that mean that the mornings should start to get lighter after today (earlier sunrise), as well as the evenings (later sunset). Not so, and there’s a simple reason for that. The length of a solar day, i.e. the period of time between the solar noon (the time when the sun is at its highest elevation in the sky) on one day and the next, is not 24 hours in December, but about 30 seconds longer than that.

For this reason, the days get progressively about 30 seconds longer throughout December, so that by the end of the month a standard 24-hour clock is lagging roughly 15 minutes behind real solar time.

Let’s say just for a moment that the hours of sunlight (the time difference between sunrise and sunset) stayed constant through December. This means that a 24-hour clock which timed sunset at 3.50pm one day would be 30 seconds slow by 3.50pm the next day. The solar day would be 30 seconds longer than this, so the sun would not set the next day till 3.50pm and 30 seconds. After ten days the sun would not set till 3.55pm according to the 24-hour clock. So the sunset would actually get later through all of December. For the same reason, the sunrise would get later through the whole of December.

In fact, the sunset doesn’t get progressively later through all of December because the hours of sunlight shorten for about the first three weeks. The effect of this is that the sun would set earlier and rise later.

These two things (the shortening hours of sunlight and the extended solar day) work in the opposite direction. The overall effect is that the sun starts to set later from a week or so before the shortest day, but doesn’t start to rise earlier till about a week or so after the shortest day.

So the old adage that that the evenings will start to draw out after the end of the third week of December or so, and the mornings will get lighter, is false. The evenings have already been drawing out for several days before the shortest day, and the mornings will continue to grow darker for several days more.

There’s one other curious thing. The solar noon coincides with noon on our 24-hour clocks just four times a year. One of those days is Christmas Day! So set your clock to noon on December 25^th, look up to the sky and you will see the sun at its highest point. Just perfect!

Links

http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/uk/nottingham

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30549149

http://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/time-facts/the-equation-of-time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time

http://earthsky.org/earth/everything-you-need-to-know-december-solstice