Showing posts with label sunset time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sunset time. Show all posts

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Moonset

During a recent sunset in early July at the Point,  a fellow sunset watcher, asked if we had ever seen a moonset. 

A moonset? 

Never thought about it. 

A moonset is best, of course, seen during a full moon and lucky us, there was one that weekend. 

So, we set our clocks early for Saturday morning, July 8 at 4:45 a.m. The alarm rang and looking outside, we saw a mist and likely not good viewing for the moonset. Back to bed, we went.


The next night, we went to set the alarm for the same time, but I thought we should double check the time. So glad we did, as we could get up even later, 5:45 a.m. The alarm went off, the skies were clear and we could see stars from the window. 

Off we dashed to the beach and we made it just in the nick of time,


  as the moon was starting to set and 
was slowly descending into a mist or fog over the bay.



It would have been better to have seen in at an earlier time in the morning, like the day before, as the sky would have been darker and it would have more dramatic. 
That darn mist!

So, as we were watching the moonset at 6:00 a.m., the sun had already started breaking at 5:42 a.m. behind us, well before the moonset. 


 It was a memorable start for a great day. 


We then made our way to 
The Blue Pig at Congress Hall for some delicious waffles with strawberries and cream. 
We were the first ones there.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Earliest Sunset NOT on Winter Solstice!


I often like to catch the sunset and when I checked on my blog site for the sunset time, which is located on the right column below, I noticed that the sunset time 
was the same for several days in a row:


How could that be? What about solstice? Wouldn't the earliest sunsets be on solstice?
After some research, NO it is not for this part of the hemisphere! The earliest sunsets are happening NOW and not just for one day but for days, as displayed above. 

Winter solstice is on December 21st this year and the reason the earliest sunsets and solstice don't coincide is due to the discrepancy between the clock and sun. It has to do with the solar noon measurement, which is a half minute longer in December. 
See this site for further information: 

Make note though, that the shortest day still is on solstice since sunrise is later!

The upside is we can start enjoying later sunsets sooner, starting December 16th!