Monday 21 December 2009

Winter Solstice

It is the day of the Winter solstice, the day on which the Earth is tilted as far away from the sun as possible. And so today at midday the sun would have been tilted away form normal by as much as 23.15 degrees at the equator..

Predictably the northern hemisphere will experience it's shortest duration of daylight today. Today was also the day I planned to recheck my calculation of the tilt of the Earth's axis. But alas! The weather is unaccommodating. Despite the fact that it was reasonably bright int he morning, just before noon, clouds started gathering ominously in the sky and any hopes of a measurement crashed.

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