[Chaos-l] Possibly A Stupid Question

[Robert Nielsen]

And here is a wonderful DRAWING of the explanation ... gotta love Google ...

http://www.mangobay.cc/users/moonfinder/dec-98.htm

Robert

At 12/14/2006  03:01 PM, you wrote:
>OK ... something Alice said at the last meeting intrigues me ... and
>doesn't make sense.
>
>Alice said, "the shortest amount of daylight is on December 20th (or
>was it the 21st), but we are already at the earliest sunset ... the
>latest sunrise will occur in January".
>
>I was wondering if someone could explain (or point me to a website
>that explains) how this can be true.   It would seem to me that the
>Earth is continually rotating as it normally does.  The Earth is also
>travelling around the Sun ... as it normally does.   And the Sun
>makes a steady movement across the sky admittedly in a strange shape
>(the analemma) which does change direction at the solstice.   So does
>all this celestial motion cause the sunsets to stop occurring earlier
>BEFORE the sunsets stop occurring later?   Logic seems to dictate
>that the sunsets would get earlier up until the solstice, and the
>sunrises get later ... in a symmetric way.
>
>Any easily understood explanation?
>
>Robert
>
>
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