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Year’s earliest solar noon on November 3


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As we changed the time today, the sunset was quite early. As a matter of fact, in Lake Forest, CA, it was 4:56 PM with a solar declination of just over 15 degrees south today. On January 6, 2020, however, it will be at 4:57 PM with a solar declination of about 22.5 degrees south. By the time the solar declination returns to where it was today on February 7, the sunset will be at 5:27 PM.

 

Compare the sunset to the sunrise now. The sunrise in Lake Forest, CA was 6:11 AM, just 11 minutes later than 6 AM, while the sunset was 64 minutes earlier than 6 PM. Why so far off center? Well, today as a coincidence with Fall Back, we also had our earliest solar noon (midday) of the year. It occurred about 15 seconds after 11:34 AM. By February 11, we'll have our latest solar noon at 12:04 PM. That's like going half way back to Daylight Saving Time without having to change the clocks.

 

At the Fall Equinox, solar noon was getting about 21 seconds earlier each day. We have been losing dramatically more daylight in the evenings than the mornings as a result of this, but today that all changes. By the December Solstice, solar noon will be getting about 30 seconds later each day. This makes the earliest sunset a few weeks before the solstice and the latest sunrise a few weeks after.

 

More about this here.

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