People can now be sure of when to catch the first rays of the sun next year with the help of the Taipei Astronomical Museum.
The museum has compiled a list of times the sun is to rise on Jan. 1 next year within a 10th of a second at 944 spots across the nation, including Taipei 101, the Taichung Folklore Park and Nantou County’s Cingjing Farm (清境農場).
“Latitude, longitude and altitude were all taken into consideration,” museum researcher Chang Kuei-lan (張桂蘭) said on Friday.
One basic rule is that as the altitude climbs, the sunrise comes earlier, although the time difference gradually narrows as the attitude gets higher, Chang said.
For each degree of latitude southward, the sun appears two minutes earlier, and for every degree of longitude eastward, it arrives four minutes earlier, she said.
The first sunrise next year is to be one to two seconds earlier than this year due to the ever-changing relative positioning of the sun and the Earth, Chang added.
According to the list, the first place in the nation to see the sun on New Year’s Day will be the 3,331m-high Sinkang Mountain (新康山) in Hualien County at 6:28:06.2am.
Among low-lying areas, the first sunrise is to occur over Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) at 6:32:28.9am.
The first rays to shine over Taiwan proper would be at Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, at 6:35:13.8am.
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