Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me

[anarchist_nomad]

There goes the Sun
[do da doo do]
There goes the Sun
And I say
It's all night...

The descent into darkness continues. Indeed, today marks a personal milestone on the encroaching dark, for this is the first day of the season where my current home (Oxford) has less hours of daylight than my childhood home (New York City) receives on the Winter Solstice -- the shortest day of the year.

These numbers are meaningless in any general sense. However, for me they are significant. I grew up in New York City, spending the first eighteen years of my life at that latitude -- 40.7 degrees North. My internal sense of normalcy was calibrated there and, to be honest, most of my life was spent at similar latitudes (e.g., Amherst, MA or Chicago, IL) or further South (e.g., Phoenix, AZ or Kamioka, Japan). I wasn't built to expect darkness of the sort that we get up here, at nearly 52 degrees above the equator!

On the Winter Solstice, my hometown of New York City will receive 9 hours 15 minutes and 15 seconds of daylight. Today -- November 8^th -- Oxford gets a mere 9 hours 12 minutes and 24 seconds of daylight... and the days are still getting shorter! By the time of the Winter Solstice, each day in Oxford will receive an hour and a half less light than what I was used to, growing up in the Big Apple. Sunrises after eight in the morning and sunsets before four in the afternoon. Ugh!

The City of Dreaming Spires receives less daylight than the City that Never Sleeps from today through Groundhog Day -- February 2^nd 2013. That's 87 days of less light than the minimum that I am used to. I am only counting hours of daylight here -- this doesn't even take into account how the long path through the atmosphere dilutes and attenuates what little light we get from the low-lying Winter Sun.

There are many things that I love about living in Merry Olde England. I must say that the Winter darkness is not on the list. My dear friend acelightning would adore this long dark tea time of the soul. Me? I'm going to be very happy to arrive back in the States next month, and glad to spend most of January in Japan.

Comments

[blaisepascal]

I know it's far off, but think of the bright side: from May 6th (or so) to August 6th (or so) you will experience more daytime than the maximum (of 15h) you would receive at your home latitude.

What you need to do is find a nice neutrino oscillation experiment in Australia to visit for the winter.

[whitetail.livejournal.com]

*chuckle* Long ago, I promised myself that if I ever got super-rich, I would have a winter home in the Western Highlands, and a winter home in Tierra del Fuego, and move from one to the other at the equinoxes. That way, wherever I lived, the sun would always be waning in the sky, and at mid-winter, I'd have glorious 18-hour-long nights.

Sol scares the daylights out of me, quite literally. ^^