Fall is here, Sunlight is dwindling

Fall starts on Thursday. This marks the Autumnal Equinox… meaning equal parts of day and night as the sun is directly over the equator.

That means we’ll see 12 hours of daylight tomorrow, right? Well… not quite. We’re at 12 hours and 10 minutes. So what gives?

The equinox is measured by using the center of the sun. However, we don’t measure sunrises and sunsets that way. Those are figured by the leading edge of the sun as it pops up over the horizon at sunrise and the last bit as it heads below at sunset. The difference from the center to the edge at both sunrise and sunset accounts for that extra 10 minutes.

By the start of Winter on Dec. 21st, we’ll be down under 9 hours of sunlight. Yay! *Sarcasm*