On 3/2/23 09:51, Brooks Harris wrote:
> Will we need DST on the Moon? :-)
I hope not! The Moon's axis tilts only 1.5°, much less than the 23.5° of
Earth's axis, so seasonal effects on sunlight duration are much less
intense on the Moon and there should be less need for Earth-like DST.
A more pressing issue is that the length of day (including daytime and
nighttime) varies more on the Moon.
Local Earth days vary by at most 0.008 hours from the mean of 24 hours
(this variation is due to the eccentricity of the Earth orbit and the
obliquity of the ecliptic). So people who think that every local Earth
day is exactly 24 hours are not far off.
Local lunar days, in contrast, are roughly 29.5 ± 0.25 Earth days
(again, this includes both lunar daytime and lunar nighttime). That's
more slop to deal with, relatively speaking, and dealing with
varying-length days could be a bit of a problem for civil time on the Moon.
Presumably ESA's boffins are on top of this.....
