Day length at the equator

 Day length at the equator is always approximately 12 hours. You can verify this using the
spreadsheet from Q6 if you aren’t convinced! The sunrise and sunset times vary a little, but
are always more or less around 6am/pm. In reality the actual day length is slightly longer than
this due to the light scattering and refractive properties of the atmosphere, which adds an
extra few minutes of daylight before sunrise and after sunset.
 Solar zenith angles however are only 0 degrees at the equinoxes – in the northern summer,
when the N pole is tilted towards the sun, the equator is tilted slightly away from the sun, so
the sun appears in the north. In the southern summer/northern winter, the opposite is true.
Interestingly, this also determines the constellations which are visible at night – at the equator
you get the northern stars or the southern stars depending on the time of year.
 This has no impact on day length however because two points on the equator always lie
directly over the axis of tilt, which means that any given equatorial location will cross the axis
of tilt twice every 24 hours. It does have an impact on day length away from the equator
because nowhere else crosses this axis.

Finding solar time for non-GMT time zones

 Find time zone offset from Greenwich in hours (West is negative, East is positive, crossover is
the International Dateline). Be aware that the time zone offset can be entirely unintuitive,
and can vary from -12 to +14, despite there only being 24 hours in a day! Also take care if the
local time is using daylight saving, as this increases clock time by one hour during the summer
(e.g., British Summer Time vs. Greenwich Mean Time).
 Convert time zone offset to degrees (1 degree = 4 minutes)
 Find actual longitude of location
 Actual longitude minus time zone longitude times 4, add E, add standard time.
 Important to note that any decimals in the correction need to be adjusted from base 10 to
base 6 – easiest way to do it is to multiply the decimal by 60, and that gives you the number
of extra seconds.

Time zone correction factor examples (for no given time of day or year, so clock time and
the equation of time can be ignored)

 Find the time zone adjustment for Seattle, WA, USA (-7 hours, -122°): -68 minutes
 Find the time zone adjustment for Warsaw, Poland (+1 hours, +21°): +24 minutes
 Find the time zone adjustment for Kathmandu, Nepal (+5 hours 45 minutes, +85.37°): -3.52
minutes, or -3:31.