In the Dark

Just a quick note to point out that the Winter Solstice in the Northern hemisphere happens tomorrow, Saturday 21st December 2024, at 9.21 UT (GMT). I am posting this in advance as I am planning to have a line-in tomorrow morning.

In Dublin, sunrise today (20th December) was at 8.37 am and sunset at 4.07 pm, while tomorrow the sunrise is at 8.38 am and sunset at 4.08 pm. Notice that both sunrise and sunset happen later tomorrow than today, so the Solstice marks neither the latest sunrise nor the earliest sunset: the interval between the two events will, however, be about 2 seconds shorter tomorrow than today. For a full explanation of this, see this older Winter Solstice post.

Anyway, today is has been the last day of teaching at Maynooth University. I did my final lecture of 2024 this morning and attended project presentations this afternoon. Campus has been very quiet all day, most people having already departed for the break. That makes me feel less guilty about going home earlier than usual at 4.15pm. Now it’s time power down everything in my office for the break and head home via the shops!

This entry was posted on December 20, 2024 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags Earliest Sunset, Latest Sunrise, Solar noon, Winter Solstice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.