October 5, 2021
You were born into motion: oceans turning, continents drifting, clouds forming, planets circling, galaxies wheeling through the dark.
Sunrise at the South Pole
Birthday · October 5, 2021
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APOD published October 5, 2021. Credit: Martin Wolf (U. Wisconsin), IceCube Neutrino Obs., NSF; ht: Alice Allen. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Sunrise at the South Pole is different. Usually a welcome sight, it follows months of darkness -- and begins months of sunshine. At Earth's poles, it can take weeks for the Sun to rise, in contrast with hours at any mid-latitude location. Sunrise at a pole is caused by the tilt of the Earth as it orbits the Sun, not by the rotation of the Earth. Although at a pole, an airless Earth would first see first Sun at an equinox, the lensing effect of the Earth's atmosphere and the size of the solar disk causes the top of the Sun to appear about two-weeks early. Pictured two weeks ago, the Sun peeks above the horizon of a vast frozen landscape at Earth's South Pole. The true South Pole is just a few meters to the left of the communications tower. This polar sunrise capture was particularly photogenic as the Sun appeared capped by a green flash.
Image credit: Martin Wolf (U. Wisconsin), IceCube Neutrino Obs., NSF; ht: Alice Allen