Jude Xu

You sit down to get some work done, tell yourself I ll go for a walk after this, and somehow it s already dark.

That s the everyday problem we re working on with Sunlight Diary: making a little room for daylight in a busy day.

• It s about 8 minutes old. Sunlight takes roughly 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to Earth.

• Daylight is a rainbow in disguise. A prism or raindrops can split sunlight into its spectrum of colors.

• You can see the Sun before it actually rises. Earth s atmosphere bends light, making the Sun appear above the horizon while it s still slightly below it.

• Blue skies come from scattered sunlight. Air molecules scatter blue light more strongly than red light, spreading it across the sky.

• Some places get daylight for months. Near the poles, the Sun can stay above the horizon for weeks or months during summer the midnight sun.