Sunday, November 11, 2012

A Tale of Two Sunrises

Ok. So the sun is rising later in the day, and not staying up as long either. Such is the way of Winter all over the North American continent. Then there is this sunrise :


That is the sun coming up on a city park here in Dillingham, and that is, in fact, the East and Juliet is the sun, as it were. So then no more than 10 seconds later I turned to the West and took this picture :


... where the sun was also rising. Whiskey. Tango. Hotel !? No, that wasn't light from the big tundra fire. That fire is now completely out, thanks to Mother Nature. As you can see from the first picture, the sun isn't quite above the horizon yet.

Buuuuuut, when you turn to the West, there appears to be MORE light. So... I don't suppose there are any astrophysicists or really good amateur astronomers out there who would care to explain what is going on?