Turnaround day

We made it! The shortest day of the year has arrived, and will soon be past. By Sunday, sunset here on the 50th parallel will be one whole minute later, at 4:22 PM.

These little minutes matter, the farther north (or south) you go. In Bella Coola (52°N), where I used to live, sunset today was at 4:16; they got 7 hours, 40 minutes of daylight. Up at the top of the Yukon (64°N), the sun didn't come up at all, and won't until the 28th of this month.

Here's a pair of mallards relishing the warm sunlight.

The male's purple head colouring may depend on the angle of the light.

Happy Solstice!

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¡Por fin! Ya llegó el dia más corto del año, y ya mañana habrá pasado. Para el domingo, aquí en el paralelo 50°N, el sol se pondrá un minuto completo más tarde, a las 4:22. 

Estos minutitos tienen su importancia, especialmente entre más nos acercamos a las regiones polares. En Bella Coola (52°N), donde antes vivía, el sol se puso hoy a las 4:16, dándoles 7 horas, 40 minutos de luz de dia. En el pueblo más norteño del Yukon (64°N), el sol ni siquiera apareció; no subirá hasta el dia 28 de este mes.

Foto: una pareja de patos ánade real disfrutando del calor del sol. El color morado de las plumas de la cabeza del macho probablemente depende del ángulo de la luz; el color usual es un verde intenso.

¡Feliz dia del Solsticio!

Every second counts

 8 hours, 4 minutes, 6 seconds. That's the length of our day here on the 50th parallel this 21st of December. And tomorrow, we'll get a whole extra second, and 8 seconds more the day after tomorrow; the days will be getting longer. Yay!

Winter sunlight, Upper Campbell Lake.

A Skywatch post.

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8 horas, 4 minutos, y 6 segundos. Es lo que dura el dia, este 21 de diciembre, aquí en el paralelo 50° Norte. Y mañana, nos toca otro segundo: 8 horas, 4 minutos, y 7 segundos. Y pasado mañana, otros 8. Los dias se alargan. ¡Maravilloso!

Foto: El lago Upper Campbell con la luz solar de invierno.

Timing the solstice.

 Just a leaf. On snow.

Frozen alder leaf.

And tomorrow's the winter solstice! We made it!

Astronomers give the date and time; the exact moment when the sun changes direction (from our point of view, anyhow), or more accurately, when the tilt of the earth on its axis puts it at the lowest point in the sky. Up north, that is well below the horizon, but here at our location, it is 16.5° above the horizon at noon. From here, it will still drop a tiny bit, reaching its lowest point at 1:38 PM, in our time zone here on the coast.

And then, the long road back. Woohoo!

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Foto: una hoja de aliso rojo en la nieve.

Y mañana es el solsticio de invierno. ¡Por fin!

Los astrónomos dan la fecha y la hora, el momento preciso cuando el sol cambia su dirección de viaje (según nuestro punto de vista, por lo menos), con una explicación más científica, cuando la inclinación de la tierra en su eje hace que el sol se ve en el punto más bajo en el cielo. En el norte, ese punto es bien debajo del horizonte, pero aquí en el parallelo 50°, queda a 16.5° grados sobre el horizonte a mediodía. De aquí, sigue bajando un poquito, llegando a su posición más baja a las 1:38 de la tarde en nuestra zona de las horas aquí en la isla.

Y de allí, empieza el largo camino hacia el verano. ¡Fabuloso!

Solstice peacock

Today was the shortest day, the longest night of the year up here in the northern hemisphere. And by this time next week we'll have gained a whole minute of daylight. Woo hoo!

Solstice peacock, looking back into the dark, forward into the light.

(Vintage double peacock vase, cast iron, possibly of Iranian origin. Hangs out around my house, keeping four eyes on things.)

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Hoy fue el dia más corto, la noche más larga del año para nosotros aquí en el hemisferio del norte. Y para fines de la semana, habremos ganado un minuto entero de luz. ¡Maravilloso!

La foto es de un pavo real que mira para  atrás hacia la oscuridad, para adelante hacia la luz. Es un pájaro doble antiguo (no sé si es una antigüedad o nada más viejo), hecho de hierro y posiblemente de origen en Irán. Anda por mi casa, con los cuatro ojos observándolo todo.

Winter solstice

 End of the day ...

4:40 PM, last week. A few minutes after sundown.

And tomorrow, the days start to stretch again. Today, we have 8 hours and 4 minutes of sunshine. Well, not actually sunshine; light behind the clouds. It's BC, after all. Over on the mainland, it's snowing. But tomorrow, we'll have a whole extra minute of daylight. Yay!

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El 21 de diciembre; el solsticio invernal. La foto la saqué unos cuantos minutos después de la puesta del sol, a las 4:40 de la tarde. Hoy, se pone a las 4:17.

Hoy tenemos 8 horas, 4 minutos de sol. Miento: no hay sol; tenemos las 8 horas de luz tras las nubes. Estamos en Colombia Británica, a fin de cuentas. Y al otro lado del agua está nevando. Pero para mañana, los días se alargan, y tendremos un minuto entero más de luz de día. ¡Bravo!

More or less

Winter solstice. Almost.

Sunrise, such as it was on a grey, rainy day this morning, was at 8:17 AM. And we will have 8 hours, 4 minutes, 6 seconds of daylight; 5 seconds less than yesterday. It's not until the 23rd that the day will be longer than today, by 7 seconds.

December Solstice (Winter Solstice) is on Monday, December 21, 2015 at 8:49 PM in Campbell River. This day is 8 hours, 18 minutes shorter than on June Solstice. In most locations north of Equator, the shortest day of the year is around this date. (timeanddate.com)

Tickling the moon. Laurie's photo, Oyster Bay, 2009

We tend to think in absolutes. Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year. In the far north, they have 6 months of daylight. Sunrise is at a precise time. The sun is overhead at noon. The moon is 384,400 km. away. It's 3 degrees above freezing today. High tide is at 12:42, at 14.7 ft.

And that's all wrong. It all depends on where you are, when you took the measurement, how you counted.

Temperatures vary from one spot to the next, a few feet away. Noon is an approximation, averaged over an entire time zone. Dawn sneaks up on us through the different stages of twilight, over a period of a couple of hours.

The moon today is 368,726 km. away from Campbell River, where I am. Tomorrow it will be farther away. Noon, when the sun is as high overhead as it's going to get, is at 12:19 PM. And the Solstice is at 8:49 tonight, long after sunset.

And so on.

It's not only living things that are fuzzy. Everything is.

Hydroids on eelgrass, anemones, and floating critters.

11 minutes before sunset

Sunset from our parking lot this afternoon:

4:02 PM, facing east-south-east.

The sun set here at 4:13 PM. And tonight, Monday, it will be 4:13 again. And then - yippee! - it starts getting later, with Tuesday sunset at 4:14.

The sun will keep on rising on its old schedule, though, later each day until January 5th, at 8:06 AM, with the next day's sunrise at 8:05. By then, sunset will be falling after 4:30.

But the solstice, with the shortest day of the northern hemisphere's year, falls this year on the 21st. We are scheduled to get 8 hours, 13 minutes, and 42 seconds of daylight today. (Those 42 seconds are precious!) By the 21st, we'll be down to 8 hours, 11 minutes, 57 seconds.

(We're lucky; up in Inuvik, directly north of us, today they'll get a total of zero (0) seconds of daylight. It won't be until January 6th that they'll have a sunrise.)

This is all very confusing. Why are the sunset and sunrise times, and day lengths, on different schedules? I found an explanation on the Royal Museums Greenwich site (UK).

The winter solstice is the time when the Sun reaches its southmost distance from the celestial equator and hence, in northern latitudes is the day when the Sun is lowest in the sky at noon. This is, naturally, the shortest day of the year in northern latitudes. To many people it seems odd, therefore, that the time of sunrise continues to get later in the day after the solstice.

The reason for this is that the Sun does not cross the meridian (when it is highest in the sky) at precisely noon each day. The difference between clock-defined noon and the time when the Sun is on the meridian is called the Equation of Time and represents the correction which must be applied to the time given by a sundial to make it agree with clock time.

There are two reasons why the Sun is not on the meridian at noon each day. The first is that the path of the Earth around the Sun is an ellipse, and not a circle. The second is that the Earth's equatorial plane and its orbital plane are inclined to one another. The two effects add together to yield the equation of time which can amount to some 16 minutes difference between solar and mean time.

Oh, but here's a bit more info to add to the confusion!

The Equation of Time 

Very simply, the equation of time is the difference between time that is measured using a sundial (true or apparent solar time) and time that is measured using a watch or a clock (mean solar time). 

Most clocks work on the idea that a day - the time between one noon to the next - is exactly 24 hours. 

Scientifically, however, a day is defined as the duration between 2 solar noons. A solar noon is the time of the day when the Sun is at the highest point in the sky, and a solar day is the duration between two solar noons. 

A solar day is not exactly 24 hours long. Its length varies throughout the year. In fact, the solar day is longer than 24 hours around the summer and winter solstices and is shorter than 24 hours around the spring and fall (autumn) equinox. This means that the length of the solar day does not always match up to the length of a day as measured by a clock. 

That's from timeanddate.com.

My head is spinning. But at least I still know what day it is. I think.

A Skywatch post.

Remembering sunshine

Another grey and foggy day. At least it has stopped raining, for the moment. Days like this, it's good to find a photo or two from sunnier times.

This one is from last September, in Bear Creek Park.

Tibouchina, aka Glory bush, Princess flower.

And one more week until our earth relents and starts to bring our northlands around to face the sun again.

(That's an awfully long way to say "the winter solstice", isn't it?)