Early Sunrise and Late Sunset


 
 
Concept Explanation
 

Early Sunrise and Late Sunset

Early Sunrise and Late Sunset: Consider an oblique ray from a heavenly body such as the sun or a star.

While travelling through the atmosphere, it continuously moves into regions of higher refractive indices continuously bends towards the normal, resulting in a path similar to that shown in the figure. Since we see an object in the direction of the ray incident on the eye, the atmospheric refraction makes a heavenly body appear higher than its actual position.

 

Consider the situation when the sun just below the horizon as in the figure. Rays of light coming from it get bent such that to an observer they seem to be coming from above the horizon. Thus, even when the sun's position is just below the horizon, the sun is visible to us. So, at sunrise we see the sun before it actually comes to the horizon. And at sunset we see it even after it has just dipped below the horizon. This increases daylight by about four minutes every day (two minutes at sunrise and two minutes at sunset).

You might have noted that the sun looks oval at sunrise and sunset. As you can see from the figure, the rays from the lower regions of the sun travel a greater distance through the atmosphere than those from the upper regions. So, they bend more. As a result, the image of the lower region gets shifted upwards more than that of the upper region. This makes the sun appear like a flattened circle, or an oval.

Sample Questions
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Question : 1

The sun looks oval at __________________ .

Right Option : C
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Question : 2

Which phenomenon explains the reason behind 2 minute early sunrise and 2 minute delay sunset ?

Right Option : A
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Question : 3

Sun appears to rise early because of _____________________.

Right Option : B
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Explanation
 
 


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