Sun finally starts to rise earlier

Extra minutes of light have come at day’s end until now

Mornings are about to get brighter as the sun finally starts to rise earlier each day, beginning Saturday.

The days have been getting longer since Dec. 21, but the gain in daylight has been entirely at the end of the day — until now.

A tilt in Earth’s orbit explains this. More on that in a moment. First, some numbers: ❚ The shortest day of the year was Dec. 21, the beginning of winter. Ottawa had eight hours, 42 minutes and 50 seconds of daylight. ❚ Saturday will have eight hours, 52 minutes and 13 seconds of daylight. We’re gaining now at a rate of just over a minute per day, which doesn’t sound like much, but we’ll accelerate to just over two and a half minutes a day by the end of January. ❚ Here’s the quirk: All the daylight gain so far has come in the afternoons. The sun sets later each day (from 4:23 p.m. on Dec. 21, to 4:35 p.m. Saturday.) That makes afternoons brighter.

But the sun has still been rising slightly later each day, making mornings darker even after the shortest day of the year, and has been stuck at 7:43 a.m. for the past several days.

On Saturday, however, it will rise at 7:42 a.m., starting the steady movement back toward summer.

That delay in getting earlier sunrises is an effect of a tilt in Earth’s axis, and also the fact that we follow an elliptical orbit, not a round one.