Sun Cycle Calculator
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This utility uses the well-known ‘Sunrise equation’ to compute the approximate times of sunrise and sunset from date (month, day, year) and location (degrees latitude and longitude). You need to select North or South latitude, and East or West longitude relative to the Prime Meridian. These coordinates can be entered directly, or you can use the 'Get Latitude and Longitude From World Map' button to select a location with a mouse click (this is not as accurate as directly entering exact coordinates, but should be close enough for most purposes, given the limitations discussed below). NOTE: The program expects latitude and longitude in fractional degrees, not degrees and minutes. Thus 27° 30’ north should be entered as ’27.5’ (i.e., halfway between 27° N and 28° N). Sun cycle time estimates are approximate for several reasons:
NOTE: The U.S. Naval Observatory hosts a web page (USNO Sun and Moon Data) that permits very accurate calculations of solar and lunar data. It incorporates ‘fixes’ for many of the issues described above, and — if you are connected to the internet — can be accessed with the ‘Naval Observatory Website’ button.
• The 'Annual Plot' button will compute and display an entire year's day length cycle, based on latitude-longitude position. The 'Print Data to Spreadsheet' button makes a tab-delineated .xls spreadsheet containing the annual cycle (date, sunrise time, sunset time, and day length). This example shows a Polar-region cycle, with complete darkness in winter and 24-hour sunlight in summer:
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