Is the darkness of the afternoon this time of year getting you down? Well, buck up. December 8th (roughly, depending on your specific latitude) was Analemma Day. Analemma Day is the day of the earliest sunset in mid-northern latitudes, and from here on into the summer the sun will set later in the day, each day, affording you more afternoon sunlight.
Note that this is not the same as the Winter Solstice, December 21st, the shortest day of the year, because the oribt of the earth is not circular, it's elliptical, and the earth moves a little faster during the time when it is closer to the sun than when it is further away. Check these out:
Douglas Dodds: Analemma, My Analemma
And in celebration of Analemma Day, and of Johannes Kepler, I got my kids a Kepler Elliptical Orbit Pizza:
The cool thing about a Kepler Elliptical Orbit Pizza is that all the slices are guaranteed to have the same area. (Ba-da-bing.)
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