Sunrise, Sunset

sunset over the Pacific, Kauai, Hawaii                                                                                      KW

Being a night owl, I would not have noticed this. Being a morning person, my spouse did. And was awake enough to think about it. What he noticed was that, over the past few days, the sun rose at the same time every morning. But our days are supposed to be getting longer. So he checked the sunset times, and sure enough, they got later every evening. So the question is this: Shouldn't the days lengthen equally at both ends? Turns out that, no, they shouldn't and they don't and the reason is complex. It's one of those convoluted explanations that I get as long as I'm looking at it sideways but that disintegrates in my brain the minute I try to understand it head-on. Basically, it has to do with solar time vs. clock time and the Earth's tilt and perihelion (note that this article was written in 2013, so the dates given probably no longer apply, but the rest of the information, of course, does): http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/science/elliptical-answers-to-why-winter-mornings-are-so-long.html?_r=0