Talk:Polar night

More light than equatorial regions?
The article says "In fact, polar regions typically get more light throughout the year than regions located closer to the equator."

But what does "more light" mean? Higher annual total insolation in watts? Or (as I suspect) more hours of non-darkness? Either way it should be clarified, and hopefully quantified. Chondrite 16:17, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * IMO, since its meaning is nonsense, it must simply be treated as false. "Throughout" means either "at every place" or "at every time", but never "cumulatively" so "throughout the year" means "more without an exception at any time". If the content hasn't already  be replaced, with an indication that someone found a RS stating something non-absurd to replace it with, it needs to be exiled to the edit history, preferably with an edit summary that says it's been discarded (with gratitude for the attempt to be helpful) as useless nonsense. --Jerzy•t 13:09, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Mountain Eclipses
I remember something about villages south of the arctic circle, but experiencing polar nights due to being north of mountains, which put the whole village in shadow. I suppose it's probably more of a twilight than a night, but it might be worth mentionning. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by M0ffx (talk • contribs).


 * That's an interesting detail, and it would bear mentioning, but it would really be best if we had some kind of citation for it. Do you remember where you learned this, and (ideally) can you dig up a reference we could cite? &mdash; coe l acan t a lk  &mdash; 03:45, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I _think_ the source may have been New Scientist. There was an idea (implemented I think) to place large mirrors at locations suitable to light parts of the village center. Unfortunately I can't remember which issue of New Scientist. M0ffx 21:39, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * In Norway there are such places, in deep east-west valleys. For eaxmple Rjukan (62°20'N) and the Rauma valley (with Trollveggen) (59°50'N). Googling gives this link: http://themirrorproject.org/ --BIL (talk) 23:06, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Number of Astronomical Polar Nights?
How many 'pure' Astronomical Polar Nights are there at each pole? --75.165.4.183 (talk) 18:19, 24 December 2006 (UTC) Jason Colberg

One per year right, and it's the same for both. --24.22.218.247 (talk) 01:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

What City?
@ 203.206.135.34 (talk) - It seems that the city name is unknown, but I could make a pretty good guess that it's Oslo as the original author is from Norway. Also, since the article is about the polar night and independent of a specific location, it shouldn't matter too much, but thanks for pointing it out. Set Sail  For The   Seven Seas    185° 44' 30" NET    12:22, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

@ 203.206.135.34 (talk) - After a bit of looking the categories that the photo has been placed in, it seems that this is the city of Tromsø. Also, the bridge confirms this as it located near the city. I'll add this to the photo. Set Sail  For The   Seven Seas    248° 35' 30" NET    16:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Cause of polar night?
Would be nice if there were an explanation of what actually causes the extreme variance in daylight cycles in polar regions. 75.161.248.110 (talk) 09:36, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

The polar day/night cycle where roughly 6 months of daylight follows 6 months of darkness is due to the fact that in addition to daily rotation to the central Sun,over the course of a year our planet has another surface rotation to the central Sun due solely to the orbital behavior of the Earth.If you look at the planet Uranus and its unique features,you will see it turns South to North as a consequence of its daily rotation along the line of its rings but also turn East to West as a component of its orbital motion - http://londonastronomer.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/uranus_2001-2007.jpg

Applied to our planet,a person standing on the South pole will turn 360 degrees to the central Sun and take an entire year to do so.When mixed together with daily rotation at lower latitudes this becomes the seasons so this explanation displaces the old and awkward 'tilt' explanation to the Sun as obviously it is impossible to explain the polar day/night cycle using that 'tilt' notion. Orion216 (talk) 07:14, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

If you stand still at the South Pole you will find yourself turning approximately 360 degrees every day. The only way that you could possibly find it taking an entire year is if the Earth were to keep one face toward the sun much as the moon keeps one face toward the Earth. 65.68.190.169 (talk) 06:58, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Polar Night in Vorkuta.
There doesn't really seem to be any polar night in Vorkuta during the 5th of January, It's more southern than Kiruna and polar night in Kiruna ends at the 1st of January. SuperHypercane (talk) 19:54, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅ and replaced for another real photo of polar night in Russia. -- Brateevsky ( talk to me ) 16:28, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Polar night. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20120904173515/http://collections.ic.gc.ca:80/simply_science/toc.htm to http://collections.ic.gc.ca/simply_science/toc.htm

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Free horizon
Being uncertain what "free horizon" means, i linked it to its article and found that that creates a red link. My bet is that  "free horizon" relative to an observer means either
 * a point at which the observer's line of sight, perpendicular to the line thru them and the center of the planet, intersects only transparent space, or
 * (more likely) a complete circle of such points: a clear full horizon or fully clear horizon. I'll probably populate my red link accordingly, accompanied by a stub tag, and disclaimers in the edit-summary and on the talk page, to the effect that that's an AGFWAG, since three solid dicts fail to mention it. --Jerzy•t 12:39, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

No complete darkness at the poles
Since the earth is tilted 23.44°, and true night starts when the sun is 24° below the horizon, latitudes > than 42°34’ north or south of equator, complete darkness does not occur on the summer solstice, whereas latitudes > than 89°26’ north or south of equator, complete darkness does not occur on the winter solstice or within a half degree of either pole. So therefore Emerald Campus twilight can last night around the winter solstice at the poles. Emerald Campus Twilight is when the sun is between 18 and 24 degrees below the horizon.

98.31.29.4 (talk) 04:13, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no such a thing "Emerald Campus Twilight". Below 18°, the sky is complete dark. Also: astronomical twilight are hard to see within an urban environment with lot of sky glow from lighting pollution. זור987 (talk) 07:18, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Ok, since the sky is completely dark when the sun is more than 18° below the horizon not 24°, so in that case how long does astronomical polar night last for at north and south poles? what dates, sunrise is on the vernal equinox and sunset is on the autumnal equinox, the transition between 6 months of polar day and 6 months of polar night at the poles happen at the equinoxes. --98.31.29.4 (talk) 17:34, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Thoughts on how best to expand this page
I start with the caveat that I don’t have time to make these edits myself, but I came to this page hoping for more description on how humans interact under polar night conditions. I had a few thoughts on how this page might might be improved:

- expanding a “mental health effects of polar night” subsection;

- a section on service provision in polar night conditions: I would imagine, for example, that virtually all public services - everything from postal delivery to park maintenance - have made lighting/ safety/ practicality operational changes to adapt to low light conditions;

- crime: someone, somewhere has to have written an academic paper with the hypothesis that crime is either higher under the atypical mental health conditions imposed by polar night, or that crime is simply harder to convict on due to low light conditions. 2603:7000:3D00:1882:9942:11F4:8E21:2E71 (talk) 12:24, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Intro to Technical Writing
— Assignment last updated by Ail39 (talk) 04:36, 28 February 2024 (UTC)