On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate, unanimously and with nearly zero debate, passed legislation to make daylight saving time (DST) permanent across the country.
The vote took place two days after lawmakers lost an hour of sleep on Sunday when the clocks sprang forward, marking this year’s DST start, and bringing with it one additional hour of sunshine for most Americans.
Let me start with the sun. Suppose you were to watch the sun (but not look directly at it; that is a bad thing) over the course of a day. Also suppose you were to observe the sun’s motion on different days of the year. Oh, I get it. You’re too busy and too impatient to do this. Well, there is a simple solution. Download and install some type of astronomy software. I recommend Stellarium. It’s free and it works on all the major operating systems. With Stellarium, you can enter a location and a time and it will show you the sky. This way you can play around with the views on different days without having to wait half a year. Instant sky gratification.
Let me show you the sun at different times of the day for my location on both Dec. 21 and June 21. This image might look crazy, but I tried to show all the locations at the same time.
Dispatches From The Front 