Why are Guam's sunsets happening later?
By Pam Eastlick  For Pacific Daily News  Greetings everyone! You can still see four planets in your personal sky, two in the morning and two in the evening. Jupiter and Saturn are high above the southern horizon in your early morning sky. Saturn is in the constellation Capricornus the Sea Goat right now and if you have a look one morning this week, I think youll understand why the large triangle of stars with Saturn in the middle of the top line, is also called The Bikini Bottom. Mars and Venus are above the western evening horizon and theyre easy to spot. Well, not exactly. Summer means warmer temperatures in the temperate zones, but it also means longer days. In most of the northern United States, day length can be less than 8 hours in the winter but 14 to 16 hours in the summer. This happens, of course, because the Earth is tilted as it spins and in summer, the northern hemisphere is pointed toward the sun and gets more daylight. Here in the tropics, since were in the middle, we dont point toward or away from the sun, so our day length doesnt change as much. Our shortest days are 11 hours and 20 minutes long, and our longest days are 12 hours and 55 minutes long. Because here in the tropics, our days dont get longer and longer until the first day of summer and then start getting shorter. We have a strange little time slide around both summer and winter solstices when the sunrise and sunset times both change. Sunset occurring later  We started June with a day length of 12 hours and 53 minutes. Sunrise was at 5:53 a.m. on June 1st which is the earliest sunrise time of the year. The sun has been setting later since the 1st, but strangely enough, on June 11, the sun started rising later and it will continue to rise later for several months. Sunset is happening later and later and that will continue until next month. This means that the first "longest day" of this year isnt summer solstice, it happened last Monday, the 14th when the sun rose at 5:54 a.m. and set at 6:49 p.m.  And the sun rises later and sets later for the rest of June. Every day from the 14th to the 30th of June is 12 hours and 55 minutes long and is the longest day. But there is one exception and Ill tell you about it next week. Enjoy the sky views at 8 p.m.  Of course, the longest day also means the shortest night but at least you dont have to wait until 10 p.m. or so for it to get dark enough to see the stars. Go out at 8 p.m. tonight and have a look at Venus and Mars. Enjoy Crux the Southern Cross in the southern sky and the Big Dipper opposite it in the northern sky. That large constellation in the southeastern sky is Scorpius the Scorpion, but you can certainly be forgiven for thinking it looks like a fish hook. Thats what all Pacific islanders called it. We dont have scorpions in the islands, but we certainly have fish hooks! Later this month, Ill tell you about something wonderful you can see below the hook. The nights may be shorter, but theyre still full of wonder. Enjoy them tonight. Pam Eastlick was the coordinator for the former University of Guam planetarium since the early 1990s. She has been writing this weekly astronomy column since 2003. Send any questions or comments to life@guampdn.com and we will forward them to her.