New Year

1 January 2012
1:08 PM

Sunrise at	10:55 AM	in direction	153°	South-southeast
Sunset at	2:54 PM	in direction	207°	South-southwest

Duration of day: 3 hours, 59 minutes (3 minutes, 11 seconds longer than yesterday)

10:55 AM this morning

The photo is darker than true, but the teal colored ambience is on the mark.  At 10:55 AM this morning the light was bright, if not shining directly into the house.  It had been comfortably bright since 9:30 this morning, the onset of Civil Twilight.

I tell you what, one of the things I learned moving up here was about the three types of twilight, Civil, Nautical, and Astronomical.  Growing up in San Diego, I was accustomed to the sun dive bombing into the Pacific Ocean in a matter of minutes. Its setting was nonetheless glorious, but you needed to stay focused to catch it.

At some point it registered in my brain that twilight was not a passing event here in Alaska, but a time of getting out and getting things done.  With over an hour of very usable light before sunrise and after sunset, I shifted into thinking less about how long the sun was actually above the horizon to thinking how long I could see to do things outside.

And for those that are really interested here are the the three definitions of twilight, the Navy's got it down pat:  http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/RST_defs.php.

By the way, I tried to get photos of the neighborhood fireworks, but the cold temperatures were not on my side.  Rather than fireworks at 4th of July, our part of the world celebrates bombs bursting in air on New Year's Eve.