Coastal sunrises surprise and delight

Posted: January 18, 2012 - 1:20am
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Jean Tanner/For Bluffton Today
Jean Tanner/For Bluffton Today

Do we take the sun for granted? Do we even give much thought to the sun except for when we get up in the morning and wonder will it be a sunny or cloudy day?

Actually, the sun doesn’t rise to greet us in the morning; we rise to meet the sun as it appears on the horizon when the earth spins eastward as it rotates on its axis.

Webster’s definition of a sunrise is: “The time when the upper limb of the sun appears above the sensible horizon as a result of the diurnal rotation of the earth.” Boy, that’s a mouthful!

The sun, a medium star, is the brightest object in the sky. It gives us light and warmth, it makes our weather and its rays store energy in our food. It’s really a glowing ball of hot gases made up of the same chemical elements found in the earth’s crust. It takes about 25 days for one rotation of the sun compared to 24 hours for the earth to do the same.

So, in actuality could we concede that a sunrise is actually an earth set while a sunset is really an earth rise since the earth is spinning in an easterly direction toward the sun? Hum-m-m, that could get too complex. I think I’ll just stick with the simple adage of “the sun rises in the east and sets in the west” and enjoy our colorful sunrises and sunsets.

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