Why Does The Sun Go Down Fslower Here?

[Drewby89]

Hey I just got back from a vaction to Las Vegas , Nevada. While I was there I noticed that the sun whent down a whole lot faster than where I live now, Atlanta, GA. So I whent to this website to see what the exact times were for sunrise and sunset, and well they were about an hour apart. http://aa.usno.navy.mil/ . If someone could explain this to me I would be very much thankful.

[swansont]

It take the sun an hour to move 15 degrees in the sky, and since we want noon to be when the sun is roughly overhead, this is why we have time zones. But the time zone is roughly 15 degrees of longitude. If you were to stand next to the border of two zones and step across, your time would change by an hour but the sun essentially not move in the sky.

 

Atlanta and Las Vegas aren't next to each other, but they are both near opposite boundaries of their own time zone, which is an equivalent configuration. Sunrise would have been different, too.

 

http://www.columbiassacrifice.com/images/tech_diagrams/US_TimeZones.gif

[weknowthewor]

Might be so... you had seen.. But it's from our point of view. In reality Sun is full neither rises nor sets. It's the phenomenon we look from here.

[jackson33]

its the visual concept. you have something to compare it with so to speak.

check out a rising full moon sometime. as it rises it appears very large and movement can be seen but when straight up, it appears small with no detectable movement but actually the same size and moving the same speed or we are on earth.

[Mokele]

I think what the original post meant was that the time between daylight and total darkness, the duration of 'twilight' seemed different.

 

I dunno about Las Vegas vs Atlanta, but this is something that does vary; when I was in Guam on fieldwork, it was astonishing how quickly it went from full daylight to pitch dark. My prof even made note of it, saying that the sun sets faster closer to the equator (at least in the sense that the light level changes faster).

 

Mokele

[swansont]

I think what the original post meant was that the time between daylight and total darkness, the duration of 'twilight' seemed different.

 

I dunno about Las Vegas vs Atlanta, but this is something that does vary; when I was in Guam on fieldwork, it was astonishing how quickly it went from full daylight to pitch dark. My prof even made note of it, saying that the sun sets faster closer to the equator (at least in the sense that the light level changes faster).

 

Mokele

 

Near the equator the sun is travelling closer to a vertical line, so the time it spends near the horizon is less, and you get from daylight to twilight to full darkness more quickly. It literally does set faster.

[insane_alien]

takes a while up here in scotland in winter. its also annoyingly low all day so you burn your retinas when driving.

[D H]

It is a lot less humid in Arizona than in Georgia. Lower humidity => less scattering of light. Twilight is short in the desert.