Ever wondered when sun rises and sets?

Skeptik said:
Even the simplest GPS receiver will tell you this information.
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Haven't got around to getting my missus one of those yet (men obviously have no need for such a device) so I'll make do with the website, a watch and my eyes. :D
 
Can someone explain the following: So we've just had the summer solstice, 21 Dec. It was the shortest day, based our distance from the sun. But if you look at the sunrise times, the earliest sunrise, in e.g. Cape Town, was around the beginning of the month, that was 05h28 lasting until 11 December. Currently it is rising at 05h33. And the latest sunset is only happening at the end of the month lasting up to 12 January, which is 20h00.

I would have thought that as the sun "starts to turn back to the Northern Hemisphere", both sunrise and sunset would change by the same rate? Why is there this slight difference?

On a sidenote, didn't Kulula a year or so ago ask for daylight savings in SA? It was something like splitting SA up in an Eastern timezone and a Western one. In Durbs for example, your poor okes don't get much time for outdoor activities after work. The latest the sun sets in Durbs is 19h00 while the earliest the sun rises is 04h47. Who wants to get up so early to go running or playing tennis anyway? You okes in Durbs would really benefit, it seems, from adjusting your clocks ahead by 1 hour in summer. In Cape Town we're just fine I think.
 
ajax said:
Can someone explain the following: So we've just had the summer solstice, 21 Dec. It was the shortest day, based our distance from the sun. But if you look at the sunrise times, the earliest sunrise, in e.g. Cape Town, was around the beginning of the month, that was 05h28 lasting until 11 December. Currently it is rising at 05h33. And the latest sunset is only happening at the end of the month lasting up to 12 January, which is 20h00.
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Surely it was the longest day here in the southern hemisphere?
 
bwana said:
Surely it was the longest day here in the southern hemisphere?
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Correct.
In the Southern Hemisphere, this is the time of the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. From now on, as the northern days grow longer so do the southern days get shorter.

The term solstice means "sun stands still." On the year's two solstices (winter and summer) the sun appears to halt in its incremental journey across the sky and change little in position during this time. Of course, contrary to appearances from Earth, the sun's "changing position" throughout the year is actually caused by the rotation of the Earth on its tilted axis as it circles the sun each year.

The solstice occurs twice a year (around December 22nd and June 21st) when the sun is farthest from the tilting planet's celestial equator. ...http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1220_021220_solstice.html
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