SUMMER SOLSTICE, MORE OR LESS

 It’s common knowledge that June 20 or 21 (sometimes 22) is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. That’s the date of earliest sunrise and latest sunset, right? Not so quick! Fact is those events occur two weeks apart.Official sunrise for Palmdale has been parked at its earliest - 5:39 - for the past seventeen days while the sun continued setting half a minute later every evening until today, June 21. This morning the sun finally rose after 5:40, yet the latest sunset still won’t come until some time after the 24th, where it will stay at 8:09 all the way through July 3rd. You got all that?Nutshell: the ‘period of longest days’ (more than 14 hours and 26 minutes at our latitude) runs from June 11 through the rest of the month. That’s nineteen days during which the time between sunrise and sunset increases and then decreases by mere seconds, peaking today only two minutes longer than June 11 or July 3. During the five very longest days (this week), the actual length differs by about that many seconds — five or so.And why the offset? Don’t ask me. It has something to do with our polar axis being cockeyed, obviously… I did see a TV weatherman explain it once, and listened really close, but when he finished I still had no idea. That’s why he was a weatherman, not an astronomer.