In this StarTalk Radio explainer video, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice are exploring what’s really going on when you watch those beautiful sunrises and sunsets.
To start, you’ll get a refresher on how the days of the week were named. Then, we discuss our pre-Copernican vocabulary to describe what’s going on in the sky. You’ll learn how refraction and our atmosphere impact sunrise and sunset. Neil tells us why, when you think you’re watching the sunset or sunrise, the sun is already past the point you're seeing. Neil also tells us how telescopes can calculate refractive effects when looking at stars.
Then, you’ll learn why the equinox is not actually the day where there’s an equal amount of night and day. Lastly, find out how light would interact with Earth if it were a black hole. All that, plus, Neil and Chuck discuss other “ghosts of the sky.”
Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/startalkradio
Subscribe to StarTalk: kzfive.info...
Follow StarTalk:
Twitter: startalkradio
Facebook: StarTalk
Instagram: startalkradio
About StarTalk:
Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!
#StarTalk #NeildeGrasseTyson
Chuck is such a great co host. Watching him absorb these words of wisdom is a joy to behold.
Flat Earth Data ermmmm... Curvature
Flat Earth Data at sea level, about 3 miles
Flat Earth Data Correct, they do not touch.
Chuck is a nice guy and very funny.
I cant help but feel that neil treats him like he knows nothing. Chuck knows a great deal.
I love the fact that Chuck is part of this show because he is the perfect proxy for the audience
We're not all comedians, you know. Only about 74%.
He sums up things very well
It's rare, and magical when you have 2 hosts with perfect chemistry. It makes or breaks a program. These guys have it. It's just as entertaining as it is educational. Doesn't get any better!
For the most part. Sometimes dude on the right makes some lame jokes, and sometimes I think neil is fake laughing.
@Anonymous Commenter same.... the other dude is cringe to me, & often seems I am alone. Well, glad I am not d:-)
I would personally prefer less comic padding. The material is interesting enough not to need spicing up, so to me it's just distraction and dilution, especially the lamer moments. Largely I think the mindset "learning needs to be fun", when taken (as it often is) to excess, becomes a way of papering over the cracks in the common first-world situation where teachers lack the ability to render the actual subject matter sufficiently interesting, and kids have been pandered to by the "Must be Fun" brigade their entire life, to the point where they have little interest in the subject matter, even in those cases when it's *not* badly presented. And here we see the same methodology in use with adults. In very many ways, the American dream has become all about never having to grow up. The real problem in the first world (it seems to me; I promise I'm about to climb down off my box!) is that the kids don't have any visceral connection with their need to know, whereas many kids in the third world will do whatever it takes to get themselves to school, given half a chance. There are times when even mediocre teachers can do okay in some parts of the third world, as long as they don't actually get in the way of the kids arranging ways to learn stuff for themselves.
One of the coolest things I have ever experienced, is watching the sun set 4 times in one evening. I was in my plane, watched the sun set started climbing hard, and the sun came back over the horizon, did it 3 times.
Thats awesome
When you think you’re being entertained but then, realize that you’re being educated by a real live science person. Thank you both. ☘️🌝🌲
I absolutely love these videos.🥰 Keep up the great work you do and information you're providing to all of us
No matter how depressed I get, two minutes of Star Talk and I’m laughing.
its a great distraction
Yo guys, i just wanna say that u can overcome ur depression. U can do it guys.
Tyson better keep Chuck employed because he makes me laugh all the time.
Flat Earth Data this is how you tag......also, what objectional reality is the technology you use to promote your incredulity based on? (Quantum mechanics) To answer your leading question, and cut your undoubtedly parroted response that should likely follow, as insults and arguments from emotion seems to be all that the #FlatEarth "community" is capable of, the answer is HORIZON. No the word horizon is NOT derived from HORIZONTAL. Level is a word, like most words in the English language, have a different meaning based on context. To calculate gravity you use the formula M1*M2/r^2. Any ball that is ON 🌎, will have a gravity that would be negligible. If we shrunk Earth down to the size of a basketball, it would collapse into a singularity from the sheer mass, but all of Earth's water could fit into a tea cup. Pour a teacup worth of water on a ball, adhesion alone should hold it. You have been tricked by a snake oil salesman, I hope you can stop trolling science and actually learn from it. #TrollingFE
Chuck, you are definitely the "yin" to Neil's "yang" I love star talk and you two have some next level synchronicity!!! science had been my guilty pleasure for the entirety of my adult life 🤣 thank you for all the content and knowledge 🙏🙏🙏 I truly appreciate your time,effort & energy👌#STARTALK4LIFE
Possible one of the best moments in those videos, when Chuck fully grasps a concept and gets that excited! I love it
I love how he breaks everything down in such way that anyone can have a full conceptual understanding!❤❤❤
“You are never actually looking at what you are looking it” that’s so true!!!! Star talk is so informative in an entertaining way love it ❤️
Wish I had him as a teacher!!! I could listen to him talk all day.
Mom: Time to wake up, the sun has risen. Me: Just wait five more minutes.
Bestt
So that's where that phrase came from 😄
… until the sun has REALLY risen!
Haha. That’s great!
Light takes approximately 8min to reach earth from sun so technically you're 3min late
I'm just really discovering these videos, and they are awesome! Thank you, Neil and Chuck, I'm enjoying your videos immensely.
I also discovered these quite late. Catchin up now ☺
Totally agreed and same, just found them and glad to have. Eye opening even if some is known it is great to add more knowledge.
@Romil Patel Same!!!
I’d love to see an episode where Neil gives his thoughts on using the sun (UV and IR) to gain energy (electricity and heat)
Fantastic video as usual. Using the same principle of light from stars that reach us and could be gone for billions of years, it's worth mentioning that should our sun suddenly vanish, everything would look and feel absolutely normal around here for 8 minutes and 20 seconds, until we abruptly went into complete cold and darkness.
Interesting, as well, thank you for posting!!!
Tyson is a brilliant educator, who understands illustrations, timing, the use of gestures, vocal modulation, etc, as valuable aids to teaching. He's worth watching and listening to carefully for those fine qualities. Chuck makes a pretty good foil, reflecting the thoughts of a child who is learning from him. The humour doesn't quite translate internationally, but that doesn't matter so much, because Neil is busy teaching viewers and listeners in ways that they will remember the information. The two of you make a good team. Thanks for this video. It's the first one I've watched from this channel.🙂👍
Thanks! Always useful entertainment in the form of information. And for the range of all age level s. When I get enough of a certain subject or focus , I look for another episode.
I never liked Math in grade school. Never in high school. Somehow in my adult years I've grown to love and see just how COOL physics and Astro physics is lol
Exactly! I love science more when Neil teaches it.
I think two critical factors come into play. Firstly, a teacher who is interesting, engaged and genuinely enjoys teaching the content. Secondly, having a relevant topic or subject that you can relate the content to.
Because they never teach what is math & why we need to learn instead they shove hundreds of formulas to solve seemingly illogical problems for everyday life with extreme logic of math.
Rraviteja Mavr ,You Have To Start Out With 2X2,Before Being Able To Calculate Anything...Whether Its The Curvature Of The Earth,Or How Much Oxygen Do I Need For My Pt,On What Flow,and At What Rate..Need To Learn Math 1st,And If Your Science Teacher Didnt Teach You That...Well Then,They Done It Wrong
Some may disagree, but math on its own can be dry and boring. But if you hang in there and grab the basics you can use that to unlock all of physics. The application of trigonometry is how you can figure out where the sun really is setting. I didn't get this until I took college physics and realized those fundamentals finally came to light into something that I found super interesting.
These gentlemen are fun to watch and listen. So informative and funny.
Totally agreed!!!
Always very educational and entertaining. Thanks guys :)
Facts!!!
Love you guys, always interesting, entertaining, funny and educational. You're a perfect match for these explainers. I wish I knew you guys. Thanks
On a need to know basis. I love it. In my field of work I am the same way. You teach what needs to be known and get more in depth the more people try to actually learn and show a willingness to learn.
I love the humour. I think my father actually explained all of this when I was about 6 or 7 years old and also why it appears to be 12 hours the nearer to the equator you are and why sunsets are way longer the further north or south you are.
Man I love the chemistry between you two!
Me too 😁
They have a lot of chemistry for a physics show.
That's more like Gravitas 😅
Chuck literally called Neil “Babe” at the end.
@The OP Miner Yess :D
I always love Chuck’s enthusiasm when he gets his mind blown
When he said you could be seeing the light that was there billions of years ago gave literal chills
Neil is like the science teacher that I never had. I just love the way he gets excited while explaining things😍🤩
He is like that because he is not teaching you real science . If he didn't simply make up the science to suit the central governments agenda , he might have some credibility . If he taught you the science , he would be just as boring as Mr. Wizard without a Timmy ! Those old enough to remember Mr. Wizard only tuned in to see how far Timmy could push Mr. Wizard , and how mad Mr. Wizard would get too , it was grate . See Neil can't even copy Timmy right , his cohost simply agrees with every nonsensical thing that Neil says .
There are 3 different sunrise and sunset times, astronomical, civil and physical (I think it’s physical). Thanks for another great video. BTW, Amateur Radio operators do EME communications by bouncing signals from Earth to the moon and back and can bounce the signals off the moon before the moon just peaks over the horizon due to refraction. Takes big antennas and lots of RF power as the moon scatters most of the signal.
"Looking at long past history" usually consumes my thoughts whenever I gaze at the stars. I've also contemplated that if we could exceed the speed of light, we would progressively see and hear further into the past the longer we travelled. Perhaps time travel isn't so far away after all! :)
This is like my daily physics class.
If it's your physics class, it's awesome!!!
This is only half of what the public knows about physics... matter isn’t what’s real... the real secret is between all matter. The space force knows... electromagnetic gravitics will make rockets redundant.. tbh they were redundant before they were created.
That I actually understand and enjoy!
Aww that's sad , to think , how very little you are being left with , and you probably think he gave you the cosmos to .
This is probably why there are so many schools of thought of astronomers using different references to determine dawn, dusk and other praying times, plus the provisions when to accomplish them. Thank you for making this video.
With you I've learned more through this pandemia than my years of high school, thanks!!
These videos are so intelligently choreographed to appear in my recommended videos list that all of your podcast helps me through each of my challenges
Chuck is such the perfect comedic foil for Neil's learned knowledge. And while I totally get Neil's explanations and need no filter, Chuck's irreverent absurdities are very entertaining. The two are the very definition of synergy. Definitely a most dynamic duo!
Mr.NDT is so great at explaining science to everyone! I’ve learned so much from him.🧠
I love Chuck! He's the perfect co-host with NDT imo. Always love the episodes where he's present.
Chuck lost me at "It's not all about you". I about lost my beverage on that one. Too funny.
Thank you for telling me something never learned in school i love learning this type of thing and you guys are great !
As funny as they are. Just their genuine laughs makes me laugh with them. Man I wish I could just sit with them at a bar and have a drink and talk
For the ones that like to know why he said 7 days of the week are named after the planets, you can see a great example in the french language Monday -> Lundi = Lune (in french, the name of the moon) Tuesday -> Mardi for Mars Wednesday -> Mercredi for Mercury Thursday -> Jeudi for Jupiter Friday -> Vendredi for Venus Saturday -> Samedi for Saturn (yeah it's better in english for that one) Sunday -> Dimanche for the sun but it's a bit more complicated... you have to think about the latin prefix Di (Dius) meaning day. (And again a bit more intuitive in english for that one too)
Great information!!! Never hurts to add to the knowledge base of individuals! Thanks for posting!!!
You guys are a gift to humanity 💛
"When you wish upon a dead star. Makes no difference who you are." Chuck Nice to be back! One of the smartest comedian out there IMO. Neil is like the Book of Revelation.
Thank you for putting in words the concepts in my mind ❤
This episode is one of my favorites! I really enjoy your videos!
Just started A level physics. Thank you for bringing comedy to a subject I love.
Dr. Tyson, can't wait to hear you explain the aberration to the ellipse. Great and informative video guys!
I love when Chuck's mind is blown. He's pretty intelligent himself if he can keep up with what Neil is putting down.
I live for the moments when Neil gets distracted by his own rapid-fire brain and goes off on a random, totally-off-topic, tangent - like straws🤣
I love Chuck's entusiasm! I feel the same way and it's nice to know I'm not the only one :)
I love how Neil just starts laughing before he even starts talking with Chuck.
Thanks Neil. I learned something new and laughed while doing it. You can’t beat that!
The hosts are completely symbiotic to the product. Perfectly matched for both, entertainment, and education. Also I love how Tyson clarifies - openly - a layman's perspective of Neil's explanations.
Chuck should be a lot more well known, he's really hilarious!
NDT is awesome it's always so entertaining listening to so many eloquent words just completely lying with the absolute confidence he's truly great at this. I mean he's one of the greatest.
Love you two! Making science fun!
When I was in Undergraduate Pilot Training, my instructor in the T-37 aircraft liked to be the first one out the door in the morning, to create this visual illusion. We would go out to the acrobatics area, and he would tell me to do a loop. So I did, and the Sun came into view. Then we went over the top of the loop, and started down the backside, and the Sun would go down again. We could get about three iterations of this fun trick, and then move on to the rest of the lesson for the day. Thanks Derald.
Was born in Chicago. Tall buildings. Never saw a sunset. Moved to sparse suburbs at age 4, and started running down the street to get the sun which was "right down there!" What a dope I was, having missed it by 5 minutes. 🙂
This morning me and my friends cycled through the country fields for sunrise, we was questioning why the sunrise appears the way it does, it’s so much easier when an astrophysicist explains :D
This is fascinating. I have a solar generator setup. It always turns on in the morning before I see the sun. Now I get why. Thanks!!! -- ALSO .. thanks for referencing my favorite poem ever!
And we also love Chuck's learning enthusiasm. That would be our youth and kids.
Chuck felt deeply at the end as to the starlight we see that is still reaching us, but often had come from stars that are “ghosts of the past”. At the very end of the episode four of Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey “A Sky Full of Ghosts”, Neil deGrasse Tyson takes it even deeper: “John Herschel was one of the founders of a new form of time travel, a means to capture light and memories. He actually coined a word for it: “photography”. When you think about it, photography is a form of time travel. *a very old photograph is displayed of John Herschel* This man is staring at us from across the centuries. A ghost preserved by light.” Yes, our treasured pictures of our loved ones are just that, like those stars “that still shine their upon us, long after they’re gone...”🙏🥺
Neil has such a great sense of humor.
Funnest way to learn right here! Everytime I watch I laugh and learn something new. Definitely must watch alllll these videos! This content could be taken directly into a classroom for kids to learn not only a body of knowledge but a fun way to communicate about science that generates positive emotions and genuine curiosity and intrigue. SHARE THIS CHANNEL!!!
Has anybody ever captured the moment on video or otherwise when a distant stars light stopped reaching us? It would be pretty crazy to just be looking up at the stars at night and see one turn off.
Another great teaching cast!! and love how you ended with the Moody blues poem. ok, so I need to know, at anytime in the day, does the sun speed up to make it real time in the sky? or is it always refracted about 5 minutes?
I'm just learning about refraction. It never occurred to me since I point my telescopes manually the stars may not actually be in the position I'm pointing at. Congratulations Neil you blew my mind again!
It's not just that they may not be in that position, they literally are not in that position. Proxima Centauri is 40,208,000,000,000 km away from our sun. That's the closest star but it still takes 4.35 years for that light to reach us and many stars are millions of light years away, some of the stars we see in the night sky might not even be there anymore or may have gone supernova (like the star Betelgeuse in the Orion constellation). It's long overdue for a massive explosion and it's too far from us to be harmful to us but when it does explode it's going to be spectacular, like those amazing space pictures you see of supernovas but right now we're in one of the most boring parts of our galactic neighborhood. When Betelgeuse explodes it will be the brightest object in the night sky; it could literally happen any day but then again it may have already happened but the light from that explosion will take 642.5 years to reach us.
@Liquidbraino I don't know if they mentioned it here (because of all the comic padding, I lost patience with trying to skip through and find out) but the effect you mention is an additional reason why the sun is not where it seems to be, it's where it was about eight minutes ago. Which at sunset makes quite a difference, but is also means that the time of (say) meridian passage - what navigators call "local apparent noon" is not the time of ACTUAL meridian passage. However instead of applying a correction which would always be the same amount, it's far simpler for the tabulated positions of the "sun" to actual denote the position of the IMAGE of the sun.
I was astonished the first time I saw the Sun "set" over the expanse of the Caribbean, and could not reconcile how fast it went from "all there" to "gone" in what seemed like 3-4 minutes. It's even crazier to know the transit actually took place 5 minutes BEFORE I saw it happen, and what I saw was an artifact or mirage created by the refraction of the sunlight.
Chuck's reactions are what make this so awesome
Very cool! I wondered why Accuweather told me we'd have 12 hours of daylight on March 17th, instead of on the 20th. Thanks for solving this mystery for me!
Neil: Are you winning sun? Sun: "no dad refraction is lagging my light speed to reach human eyes"
This is the true sauce right here.
Best comment
This is the best thing I've seen all day
Perfect
I love that song. In the 70's radio, DJs didn't play that ending poem. Very sad for people who hadn't bought the vinyl record.
Love this...Neil brings out the kid-level curiosity in me.
One revelation I had many years ago when looking at familiar constellations was that each of those stars can be at vastly different distances, from a few hundred light-years to millions. It’s easy to check using a phone app like Star Walk.
It is so awesome that I find this episode right now. Over the weekend I was filming sunsets in one of the canary islands. I noticed exactly that. In the last seconds and watching through the lens of the Camera the sun was already set, but if raise my head and watch it directly, the sun was still visible. I figured out something regarding optics was going on, but I did not exactly what it was - until now. BTW, this must be that the camera lense is somehow unaffected by refraction? 🤔 This weekend I was
I think it's because of the altitude! Imagine sitting on a chair and seeing something on the horizon or may be an object which is behind an obstrction. Once you stand up, you can see more of that object behind the obstruction. This is why you could see the sun even after you camera stopped seeing, i assume you were at a higher elevation (even some feet higher then the lens). Have you ever tried watching planes near sunset? You would have watched sunset at the ground, but when you look up the airplane is still receiving sunlight. Or may be another common example, the sun light up the peak before it lightens up the ground!!
I don't think you've figured it out there unfortunately. As Ankit says it's more likely due to a change in perspective, with a higher view point meaning you see the sun above the horizon. Your optics will change the appearance of object relative to one another. It is often said a telephoto lens will "compress objects" but I don't think that explains the phonemenon you mention. Your eyes being higher does. The light that comes into the lens is refracted the same way that the light entering your eye is refracted as this refraction is happening as the light enters the Earth's atmosphere. Incidentally your lens (and your eye) also relies on refraction to give you a focused image. So it is definitely not correct to say that the "lens is somehow unaffected by refraction".
Love these explainer videos and the interaction between you two are amazing. I would very much very much like to hear about the Earth ‘not ellipse’ orbit Neil, but I cant just drop by you Office since i am i Denmark 😄
I'm glad this was brought up in this video because I've always wondered, if some day far far into the future humanity discovered how to travel using like worms holes and/or faster than light travel; how would we aim for galaxies very far away when we know that they are in a different position from what we observe the now aged light to be in upon observation?
Not sure, but at least you could have very detailed measurements to work from. If you can move faster than light, you can build an aperture of arbitrary size and density for a picture of it by chasing down the light it emitted in a particular instant along a variety of angles.
But really it is not that much to figure where it would be by the time we get there. We already do that now. If someone throws a ball near you, you have to anticipate where the ball will be and meet it there to catch it. Or going to the moon, You have to know where it will be and aim for that place. The only difference with faster than light travel would be knowing where it is now, not where it appears to be and meet it where it will be when we get there.
@Larry Thielen All true except you forget to factor in the fact that dark energy doesnt expand the universe on a scale of catching a ball or going to the moon. It's the incredibly vast distances between especially distant galaxies. Maybe we will figure it out but at the moment it's still hard to wrap ones head around it
@Tyler Kruit I'm not astrophysicist or anything, but I think dark energy and dark matter is all around us. I mean they don't exactly know what it is, but do know it is all throughout the Milky Way and speculate it is within the solar system, within the earth itself and not just way out there in other galaxies. I think seeing its effects is harder locally because we are bound by gravity...Gravity is stronger at our smaller scale than when we look out in the vastness of space. But then what do I know.
@Larry Thielen I also dont know for sure that it's not all around us but that's what I've been told from reputable sources, that on the scales of even inside galaxies dark energy doesnt have much of an effect compared to the vastness of intergalactic space. Again all this hinges on the fact that faster than light travel is possible at all and whether our bodies could withstand whatever extra dimensions are probably required to fold space and time in that way. If the speed of light or close to it is the maximum we can travel at there is very much so a specific point in the future that after we cross it the increasing speed of the expansion of space will effectively cut us off from ever being able to reach another galaxy again, even at lightspeed. Also if it was true lightspeed, supposedly light has no experience of time at all according to Einstein, I think, so we would just perpetually travel forever without ever actually getting there
every time i watch him explaining something i feel like a child
A child that finally understands 👍
So thankful this man speaks literally only truth. Refreshing to believe. Brings tears to my eyes. Who will my great grandsun be able to see this and cover this information after my passing? Hes a late bloomer.
This is precisely why I believe sunsets are the most mathematically beautiful thing in observable nature. Rainbows take two steps of refraction. Sunsets take one.
Amazing! Neil can you explain the sun rise and set locations on the earth's compass and how it changes when and where you are please?
The look in his eyes when he gets what Neil is saying. “ Magic “
You both are perfect combination of Wisdom and Fun
I'm just here to listen to Chuck's priceless reaction 😄 I'm looking forward to the not so eliptical orbit explainer 😮
Hey Neil. Could you discuss an eventide sunset? When you see a green ball in the ocean at sunset. A rarity for sure.
The illusive green flash.
Watching the sunset a few months ago in the night sky, with a quarter moon in the night sky, I used the reflection on the moon to demonstrate how the reflection shows where the sun is, and I was confused because the reflection of the moon put the sun a lot lower than the horizon I saw it setting on.. @5:00 explains this.. nice to know I wasn't seeing things and now know why I saw what I saw.. Thank You
In ALL the years I've been on KZfive, I've subscribed to only 5 channels. StarTalk is one. I don't know how to give you guys a better compliment. You ROCK! As it should be
Wow! I always wondered why the charts don’t show the 12/12 split on the equinoxes. Thank you!!!!!
Excellent service you and you're team delivery us all... on behalf of everyone sincerely thank you. MJJ
The Moody Blues is my favorite. There are two ways to express the last line . Which is or which is? The illusion is the universe. Thanks for explaining refraction.
The Spanish word 'arrebol' means 'the beautiful red glow of the clouds at sunset'. I think it's unique in that description amongst the languages.
I want to buy Neil and Chuck and put them in my living room and just listen to them all day 😅
Kidnapping; really? 😧
Was in Mombasa -98, wanted to see sunrice from ocean. It happend so fast that if you turn head even for a second, sun was already above horizon.
Learning facts that I can share and appear to be intelligent. Thank you for making knowledge enjoyable
Man I love the physics between you two lol
Would that be physics, or chemistry? :-)
fun thought: what if we edited the human brain so that it'd correct the mistakes of seeing refraction into just seeing a clear image without it, based on the particles in light's path would be really cool to develop something like that
Ohhhhh so fresh and energetic you guyz are !!! This is pure awesomeness melting in my ears !!! So refreshing and creating strong images to absorb those beautiful informations !!! Keep it coming ! Cheerzzz !!! Yann
This is my first comment on youtube, I follow starTalk, cosmos and other space shows. Wish Neil was my physics teacher at school, the way he explain things is Mind blowing. This gives me high ! :)
When I saw the words "Sunset illusion" I was assuming it was going to talk about: if you look into the sky without knowing the time nor direction, you can trick yourself into believing it's either late evening or early morning.