Yesterday, in the brief in the DR1 Daily News on the time change, we shared an erroneous speculation made to us that if the clocks were not changed, by March the sun would rise at around 4 am and set shortly after 4 pm. That is a wrong observation which readers promptly wrote in to correct. (The sentence which went out in the newsletter version, subsequently was deleted from the online version). Carolina Humphrey observed that daylight hours should start to increase not decrease after December 21 (Winter Solstice). Danilo Vicioso wrote alerting on the same blooper and pointed out that the change would be gradual so it would be hard to notice right away. In other words, it will not be nighttime at 4 pm in March. Sang Wong explained that "in its journey around the Sun, the earth reaches one of its two orbital extrema on December 21 (Winter Solstice). From that point on it moves towards its closest position to the sun on March 21 (Vernal Equinox). Then it moves again to the next orbital extremum on June 21 (Summer Solstice) after which it travels towards the Fall Equinox on September 21 again placing it closest to the sun. The exact time of sunrise and sunset at any spot on the earth’s surface depends on it’s latitude and the position of the earth in the plane of the ecclipic i.e. the imaginary path in space swept by the earth in it’s orbit around the sun. He recommends reading the US Naval Observatory Web site at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/AA/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html
