Why does sunrise time not change

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Word Match Congratulations! Share results. Play Again Quit. Next Question. Every 23 hours and 56 minutes, the Earth rotates once on its axis.

But as the Earth rotates it also moves along its orbit around the Sun. After 23 hours and 56 minutes, the Earth has moved far enough along that it needs a further 4 minutes, on average, to realign itself to the Sun. The key word here is average. In February, May, June and July a solar day can equal 24 hours. But around the autumnal equinox in March and the spring equinox in September, the solar day is about 20 seconds less than 24 hours, and at the solstices, the solar day is slightly more than 24 hours.

Since the Earth is tilted by The solstices are now obvious. They are the moments when the Sun reaches its most northern or southern points. When the Sun hits its northern most point, it shines down on the northern hemisphere bringing the long days of summer. The Sun is mostly moving north-south with only a small fraction of its movement in the east-west direction or parallel to the equator. At these times, the Earth has to rotate even further to bring the Sun back to due north, and hence the solar day is longer than 24 hours around the time of the solstices.

So there are two things going on here. As we move towards winter, the tilt of the Earth makes the days grow shorter.

The winter solstice has the shortest daylight hours of the year and will occur at p. CST on December 21, On that day we have our shortest day and longest night of the year in terms of daylight. However, for Madison this year, the earliest sunset occurred on Dec. The time when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky is called solar noon. One solar day is the time it takes for the sun to return to its highest point in the sky. The period from one solar noon to the next is called the solar day.