I live in Asia so I spent my whole life having sunset between 6 to 630pm so by that time everywhere was pretty dark and the streetlamps came on. I was pretty shocked later in life when I found out that there are parts of the world like in Europe or the States where it’d still be bright out at fucking 730 or even 8pm. How come? I know that they are behind by Asia and Australia by some hours but why does the sun set later there too?
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Draw a circle. Now draw a line right through the middle. Now move to the right and draw a line through the circle again, the same length as the first line. You’ll notice a shorter amount of it is in the circle.
The line represents the path of the sun and when you get closer to the edges of the circle that represents being further from the equator. The sun travels the same distance everywhere but hits the earth less towards the poles, causing it to leave (set) earlier than places closer to the equator.
This happens because our axis is tilted. The times of sunrise and sunset happen differently each day as the earth orbits the sun and changes slightly which part receives full sun. And, of course, the north and south hemispheres are opposite, so while one half has an earlier sunset than the equator, the other half has a later one. This dance of shorter and longer days is what gives us our seasons.
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