The setting sun in San Diego, south California, USA

[Segilla]

I'm trying to understand tne following description of the progress of the sun towards sunset.
"Our house faces southwest. Right now (1 July), the sun is setting far to the north in the west, so our late afternoons and early evenings are in the welcome shade of our neighbors' tree. Later in the year when it's moved south, the sun does hit our windows square on when setting".

Not very good at logic and visualising this sort of thing.

[lord molly]

in the late year, they get sun, in the summer they don't. what do you want to know?

[Segilla]

I can't dispute that they get shade, (that depends on height and overhang of trees etc), but surely the sun is always to the S, never overhead or to the N?

[mibn2cweus]

The Sun is never directly over head north of the Tropic of Cancer or 23.5 degrees north latitude. However it appears north of due east in the morning and north of due west in the evening at latitudes as far north as 46 degrees during summer solstice.
The reason for this is that when it approaches the horizon we are seeing it along a line that follows the curvature of the Earth. This line is sometimes refered to as a great circle. An airplane or ship navigated in this direction would end up in the tropics when it got a quarter of the way around the globe.

[heathfield]

Segilla, you can find the compass bearing of the sunrise and sunset at San Diego using Form A on this site The result will be in the columns below the 'degrees' symbol (�). But remember that the results will be for a flat horizon, as if you were at sea. Experiment with different dates, and see how the sun rises and sets further north or south over the space of a year. (And where it asks for height, don't worry, just enter a zero, since this won't make too much difference to the results).

mibn, curious to know how you arrive at a figure of 46�
Surely the sun will rise north of east and set north of west at latitudes up to 66.18�N in summer?. This is the latitude where the sun will be seen to set only momentarily at summer solstice, so its rise and set will only be an angular second or so away from north.
(Arctic Circle, where the sun's centre is on the horizon at summer solstice midnight, is at latitude 66.33�N. Take away the sun's semi-diameter of 15' to get 66.18�N).
Not being pedantic, just that the 46� has got me worried. Am I missing something?

[Space]

Segilla, maybe you can visualize it better if you take a more extreme example:
Imagine you are somewhere inside the polar circle and it's summer solstice.
As the day passes, the sun will never set, it will go all around you in all directions, including north.

[heathfield]

Ooops. That should have been 66.08�N, not 66.18�. What a silly billy.

[mibn2cweus]

heathfield,
Hmmm . . . nevermind? Between vernal&autumn equinox the further north you go the further north of east/west the sun will appear to rise/set. When I figure out where the "46" <"? came from I'll let you know? Thanks!

[heathfield]

Try 'Alt + 0176' ;-)