The sun just went down here a few minutes ago

[Blue_In_AK]

(about 10:45). Here it is for all you late-night lounge lizards.

[ZombieNixon]

1. Oooh...purdy!

:o

[Blue_In_AK]

2. Alaska rocks.

Glad you liked it.

[Oeditpus Rex]

3. Is that about as dark

as it's gonna get?

[Blue_In_AK]

4. Here in Anchorage

the sun is setting about 10:40 now and rising about 5:30, but there is still some light on either side of these times. Later on it won't ever get completely dark, although theoretically there are two or three hours between sunset and sunrise. However, up in Barrow, the sun came up one day last week -- I forget which day it was -- and won't set again for another two and a half months. The amount of light in the summer takes some getting used to, but it makes for great camping and fishing trips. :) In the winter, we just hunker down.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. The transition must be really fast after the equinox

Here (Minneapolis) it takes about a month before we have a noticeable amount of daylight after dinner. Now the sun is setting at about 8PM, and by mid-June, it will be up till nearly 9:30.

Of course, we're only HALFWAY to the North Pole.

[Blue_In_AK]

6. We're gaining almost six minutes of daylight a day....

...and the points on the horizon where the sun rises and sets are moving northward at a very noticeable rate. Every time I go down to the point to take a sunset shot, it's at a different place. From the middle of winter to the middle of summer it seems like the sunrise and sunset points change about 120 degrees or so. I'm not a scientist and haven't looked it up, but it's the difference between the sun setting around 3:30 in the winter to 11:30 in the summer.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. I remember seeing red sky at 11PM in northern Norway in August

and the first gray light of dawn at 2AM.

[Blue_In_AK]

8. That's about right.

I think Oslo is close to the same latitude as Anchorage, maybe just a little further south.

[Hissyspit]

9. My first night in Alaska in 1974 the sun didn't go down at all!

It was pretty wild to see for a 12 year old.