Image:SeasonDuration.jpg

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[edit] Summary

I made this chart from data found on the US Naval Observatory site. It shows the durations of the seasons. The season lengths are different because Orbital mechanics require that the length of the seasons be proportional to the areas of the seasonal quadrants, so when the eccentricity is extreme, the seasons on the far side of the orbit can be substantially longer in duration. Today, when fall and winter occur at closest approach, the earth is moving at its maximum velocity and therefore fall and winter are slightly shorter than spring and summer. Today, summer is 4.66 days longer than winter and spring is 2.9 days longer than fall.

The source web page is: http://members.aol.com/gregbenson/iceage.htm GregBenson 18:14, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Licensing

I, the creator of this work, hereby grant the permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. Subject to disclaimers.

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	Date/Time	Dimensions	User	Comment
current	18:14, 10 September 2006	948×338 (142 KB)	GregBenson (Talk \| contribs)	(I made this chart from data found on the US Naval Observatory site. It shows the durations of the seasons. The season lengths are different because Orbital mechanics require that the length of the seasons be proportional to the areas of the seasonal qua)