Polar Date: July 9, 2008
When will the sun go down? It’s no secret that Alaska is known as the Land of the Midnight Sun. It should be known as the Land of All Sun All the Time. Last night I awoke at 2:00 a.m. from a sound sleep and was so disoriented by the bright sunshine in the tent I thought it was 2 in the afternoon. I couldn’t figure out why there wasn’t anyone around anywhere and it wasn’t until I looked at the 24 -hour clock on my computer that I realized it was actually 2 o’clock in the morning.
That experience led me to wonder when will there be a sunset up here? I did what everybody does when they wonder something and there is a computer at hand – I Googled it, or as I like to say, I put it in the google. The site I liked best shows the sunrise, sunset, dawn and dusk times on a table and two graphs. To see them, click on the resource below.
***Can you tell when it’s going to get dark at Toolik? If you can, post your answer on the Ask the Team section.
Signing off from Toolik Lake, and remember, *"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew”. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964 *