Why does the sun appear to rise and set on the north side of my house in the summer?

Question

I have a house in Colorado, with the backyard side facing straight west (towards the Rockies). I noticed that in the summer the sun appears to set to the north of the western side of my house (and shadows are cast in a long diagonal from North to South). In the winter the sun appears to set to the south of that side (with shadows going the other direction). Since I am located in the Northern hemisphere, shouldn't the sun always set on the southern side of the western side of house? I am sorry but I have seen this enough times that I am a little confused.

Answer 1

The tilting explanation is correct.  I'd like to help you visualize it a little bit better.  Imagine the Earth's axis is straight up/straight down, at a right angle to a line between the Earth and the Sun.  Under those conditions the sun always rises in the East and Sets in the west--perfect East and perfect West.

Now imagine in your head that the Earth's axis is tilted on its side (like Uranus) with one pole of the axis pointed RIGHT AT the sun.  Your hemisphere is rotating but it is *always* in the sun.  There is no night.  The sun does not rise or set but sits there right at "north."    

So in one imaginary situation, tilted perpendicular to the sun, we get *perfect* rising in the East and setting in the west.  In the other imaginary situation, the Sun is *always* in the North, there is no rising or setting at all (the shadow side of the planet would freeze).

Those are the two possible extremes.  A zero degree tilt, or "straight up" (giving nights and days of equal length and sunsets and sunrises perfectly in east and west); and also a ninety degree tilt, pointing right at the sun, there is no night/day associated with rotation, and the sun sits squarely over the north pole.

What does the Earth actually do?  It is tilted at 23 degrees.  Reasoning between the extremes, you can see that at 23 degrees the sun would move further north than at 0 degrees, but not nearly so far north as it would if the world were tipped so that the north pole pointed right at the sun.  If pointing-at-the-sun means daylight all the time, a tilt of 23 degrees towards the sun means "more daylight but not daylight all the time" and "farther north but not all the way north."  When the earth is tilted away (winter), the days get shorter, and the sun is more to the south.  

The tilt towards the son is part of the precession.  In about 12,000 years the Earth will still be tilted but the tilt will have rotated around.   January in NY will be summer.  That will be even more confusing.

Hope that helps,

GN  

Answer 2

The planet is currently tilted 23°.  In the summer, the north end of the planet is tilted towards the sun.

Answer 3

The Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn are the Northern and Southern latitude limits of the suns rising and settings, the center of the two being the equator. The sun should never rise above the Tropic of Cancer and should never set below the Tropic of Capricorn. Sun should not be setting to the north of the western side of your home being that the Tropic of Cancer is quite south of us in North America. The sun has to be setting in your south western direction unless the earth experienced an axis shift to make the Tropic of Cancer to the north of you.

Answer 4

It's because Earth is tilted, so the path of the sun in our sky won't be perfectly dead-in-the-middle East to dead-in-the-middle West.

See how Polaris never seems to move in the sky? It's almost aligned with the axis of rotation of Earth. The entire sky seems to rotate around Polaris (again an illusion due to the Earth's rotation). In Summer, the sun is simply closer to Polaris in the sky -- closer North.

Answer 5

I also live in Colorado.

As the earth rotates around the sun we see that the position of the sun in the sky changes. The earth is also tilted on its axis around 23 degrees. So as the earth rotates around the sun each day (the earth making one rotation it is working its way around the sun.

In the winter the southern hemisphere is closer to the sun therefore the rise and set of the sun is to the south. In the summer the northern hemisphere is closer to the sun because of the tilt on the axis thus it is higher in the sky to the north. Alaska get 23 hours of daylight in the summer at the longest day and 23 hours of dark in the winter at the shortest day.

You can recreate this if you take a flashlight and a globe. take the flashlight and shine it on the globe and then walk in a circle around the globe. As you do this you will see parts of the globe light up more and the position of the light will change as you move around.