When is it Dark?
 

Hi again, does anyone have an approximate guess when the sun sets the first week of Sept? Just curious for driving and such. Thanks!

That site is AWESOME! THANKS!!

Northmole'

The sun usually set just about the time it drops below the horizon:-D

Hee, hee!!! ;)

Did you have any particular part of the world in mind?

Easy. Approx 12 hrs after sunrise, no matter where you are in the world.

not 12 hours if you are in Alaska!

My point was that 1st week of Sept is quite close to the Equinox. On Sept 21, no matter where you are in the world, it's 12 hrs daylight, 12hrs darkness.

You are right, that in Alaska, even on the 1st week of sept there are 13+ hrs of daylight, with it rapidly shrinking to 12 by the 21st.

rkkwan
Great link! Thanks for sharing.

Being a flatlander in Florida, I was dismayed to find that the sun sets so early in CA on my last trip there. My rental car reservation got screwed up so I was late getting out and hadn't thought about this important issue. It's difficult to get the full gist of the waves crashing on the Pacific in the dark when you can only hear them.

12 hours of sunlight anywhere in the world on the Spring and Autumn equinoxes.

Modern time is a human creation. Before there was standard time, NOON means when the sun is at the highest point of the sky. So, if sunrise is 7am, then sunset is at 5pm; if sunrise is 7:02am, then sunset is 4:58pm. Each town will have its own time.

But with the advance of railroad, standard time is introduced, then later we get daylight savings time. It's when HUMANS get involved that we get all kind of weird times. For example, the EST covers Maine to some parts of Indiana. Those in Maine will have sunrise much earlier on the same clock than those in Indiana.

It's even worse in China, where there's only the Beijing time. People in far western Xinjiang won't see their sun set until very very late at night, especially in summer; conversely, you get up at 8am in the winter, and it's still dark.

Okay, sorry for going on and on... :)

Sorry, sorry sorry all! I meant to post this on the Alaska topic forum. I appreciate the help. and the calculater website is great!

Northmole, for your future posting pleasure, there is no Alaska forum. Everything posts to a generic US forum. If someone were to do a search for "Alaska" your thread would come up there though. You're not the first - by a long way! - and you won't be the last to misunderstand this.

Northmole, we arrived in Anchorage toward the end of May last year at midnight, and it was kind of like twilight outside--not light, but not dark, either. After that, though, we never saw "darkness" until we came home. With each passing day in June while we were there, the Alaska "night" actually got brighter and brighter . . . looked around 4 - 5 PM (as compared to home) most of the night. Hope this helps!

Tandoori Girl:

The next time, shine the headlights of your rental directly toward the ocean rather than toward the snack bar.

They're running campaigns in IN right now to change the situation. The campaign of the "anti" side runs slogans like this "Do you want to be depressed like the people in IL"

Honestly, it really is funny. And so true that the time is only altered by human interference with all the references.

On the lake where I had a cottage in IN in the '90's - opposite sides of the lake were on different times for 1/2 of the year. The result was that one time we showed up to meet with others for supper as they were leaving. Now all my kids preface every utterance with Michigan Time or Illinois Time.