If the sun is at it’s relative peak at noon, why does it take so much longer to set than it does to rise for at least half of the year?

Question

The closer you are to the date of the summer solstice, it seems to gradually take up to 10 hours for the sun to set. Yet, the sun doesn’t begin to rise at 2am. Why is that?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

You are confusing “noon” with the time on your clock. In many parts of the world the clock is shifted during “summer time” to make more hours of light after lunch, when it’s useful, and fewer hours before people get up, when it’s “wasted”. The noon that’s when the sun is highest in the sky is a local time that’s not a function of clock settings. Time zones are a useful approximation of the actual local time, but the approximation is subject to these manipulations.