Lisbon - Sunrise - Fotopedia
Paserela over the Tagus River, in the Park of Nations - Lisbon. Taken in the sunrise
Wikipedia Article

Lisbon (Portuguese: Lisboa; [liʒˈboɐ]) is the capital and largest city of Portugal. It is considered an alpha global city and is the seat of the district of Lisbon and the main city of the Lisbon region. Its municipality, which matches the city proper excluding the larger continuous conurbation, has a municipal population of 564,477 in 84.8 km2 (33 sq mi), while the Lisbon Metropolitan Area in total has around 2.8 million inhabitants, and 3.34 million people live in the broader agglomeration of Lisbon Metropolitan Region (includes cities ranging from Leiria to Setúbal).

Due to its economic output, standard of living, and market size, the Grande Lisboa (Greater Lisbon) subregion is considered the second most important financial and economic centre in the Iberian Peninsula. The Lisbon region is the wealthiest region in Portugal and it is well above the European Union's GDP per capita average – it produces 37% of the Portuguese GDP. It is also the political centre of the country, as seat of government and residence of the Head of State.

Sunrise is the instant at which the upper edge of the Sun appears above the horizon in the east. Sunrise should not be confused with dawn, which is the (variously defined) point at which the sky begins to lighten, some time before the sun itself appears, ending twilight. Because atmospheric refraction causes the sun to be seen while it is still below the horizon, both sunrise and sunset are, from one point of view, optical illusions. The sun also exhibits an optical illusion at sunrise similar to the moon illusion.

The apparent westward revolution of Sun around the earth after rising out of the horizon is due to the Earth's eastward rotation, a counter-clockwise revolution when viewed from above the North Pole. This illusion is so convincing that most cultures had mythologies and religions built around the geocentric model. This same effect can be seen with near-polar satellites as well.

Sunrise and sunset are calculated from the leading and trailing edges of the Sun, and not the center; this slightly increases the duration of "day" relative to "night". The sunrise equation, however, is based on the center of the sun.

The timing of sunset with respect to longitude time varies with the time of year and the latitude of the viewer's location. The precise local time of sunset depends upon the viewer's precise longitude the time zone of the viewer's location. Small daily changes and noticeable semi-annual changes in timing of sunrise are driven by the axial tilt of Earth and the planet's movement in its annual elliptical orbit around the Sun. Those two factors cause main apparent anomalies in precise timing. And thus, for instance, in the Northern Hemisphere, the latest sunrise does not occur on the winter solstice around December 21, but rather about two weeks later, in early January (influence from the Earth's faster movement near the perihelion which occurs around January 3). Likewise, the earliest sunrise does not fall on the summer solstice around June 21, but occurs earlier in June in the Northern Hemisphere (connected with the slower Earth's movement around the aphelion). Subsequently, there occurs easily noticeable phenomenon of daylight shift, as the length of daylight of each particular day in winter (December in the northern hemisphere) reaches its maximum indeed at the time of the winter solstice, but the sunrises continue to travel still to have their maximum hour in early January while at the same time sunsets occur later and later every day starting from the middle of December. As the result it may appear to stay quite dark in the morning each day till the middle of January while at the same time becoming much brighter and brighter with each passing day starting from as early as the middle of December. As one travels farther from the equator, the times of sunrise and sunset change throughout the year. Even on the equator, sunrise and sunset shift several minutes back and forth through the year, along with solar noon. These effects are plotted using an analemma.

These articles are licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA License. They use material from Wikipedia content.
Icon_album_items Albums
Album Page  
Lisbon Triangle
Sunrise Triangle