early sunset

[cellio]

Today, plus or minus a day, is the earliest sunset of the year locally. (No, it's not the solstice. Pico-explanation: because the solar day isn't always the same length.) The first explanation of this I heard, and that I kind of grokked, was an earlier version of this essay by Larry Denenberg (which I just found in email from 1997). The Naval Observatory also has a short explanation.

By "plus or minus a day", I mean that I haven't found any place that gives astronomical times down to the second.

Comments

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I had a discussion recently with someone (I forget whom) and I was sure that the earliest candle-lighting times were about now even though the shortest day isn't for another week+, but I couldn't explain how that worked.