Dusk twilight full#

The sun is between 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon, and this is the spell when there is still a little light in the sky, but before true dark. Tonight’s nautical twilight will begin at 7.23pm and end at 8.02pm. Nautical dusk is the moment the sun reaches 12 degrees below. The term dates back to when sailors used the stars for navigation, because during nautical twilight – the spell when the sun is between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon – most stars can be seen with the naked eye. Tonight’s civil twilight will begin at sunset at 6.49pm and end at 7.23pm. The moment that it reaches 6 degrees below is called civil dusk. More precisely, it means the time between sunset and the moment that the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon. I see neighbours gardening in proximity and chatting over the garden fence during civil twilight. Such a polite term, and so expressive of the period when the light starts to fade, but you can still comfortably go about your business without the need for artificial light. (Times given are for Birmingham, it being roughly in the middle of the UK.) So here are civil twilight, nautical twilight and astronomical twilight and their dusks explained, followed by the times you can expect each tonight. There are of course many beautifully poetic names for dusk – dimmet, the gloaming, simmer dim in Scotland, the dimpsy in Devon – but there are also official names for each of the three stages of twilight and dusk. And so I have been researching twilight and have found that there is more to it than I thought. I am currently crowdfunding to create a reinvention of the rural almanac, which will contain tables on moon phases, sunrises and sunsets, the sky at night, seasonal gardening and food. They are also little more complex than you might think. These are the last of the dusk gardening days.ĭusk and twilight are beautiful, evocative words and times. It falls more than an hour earlier than it did at the beginning of the month, as we hurtle towards the day the clocks go back, on October 30. Right now, dusk is moving in alarmingly fast.

Dusk twilight full#

Twilight is magical to gardeners, most particularly to those of us who work full time, and dash out to grab a few minutes’ gardening fix post-work, before darkness descends.