CNN got it wrong. Or why everyone should take Astro 101
The snippet lasted only a few seconds, and I’ll bet most viewers didn’t even notice the mistake.
It was during a CNN Special Investigation Report on food safety. The camera supposedly was trained on the Sun as it rises above the horizon. Diagonally. Toward the top left of the screen. In California.
Well, it cannot have possibly happened, not in the Northern Hemisphere anyway. Clearly the cinematographer was just running a sunset backwards to create a “sunrise,” a geographically wrong sunrise. Here’s why.
The Sun always rises in the east and sets in the west, no matter where you live, because the entire Earth rotates in the same direction. The path of the Sun across the sky, however, depends on your latitude, because the Earth is round.
If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, facing east, you will see the Sun rise over the horizon and follow a diagonal path toward the upper right (also known as the southern sky). At sunset, facing west, the Sun will slowly dive toward the horizon from the upper left (still the southern sky). The angle of that path relative to the horizon matches your latitude. (Where I live, that angle is about 38 degrees.) As you head north, that angle gets closer and closer to zero. So, during the Arctic summer the Sun cruises above the horizon, never setting.
Heading the other way, toward the equator, the angle of the Sun’s path increases to 90 degrees. At sunrise or sunset, the Sun drives straight up or down from the horizon.
Traveling onward, the “tilt” of the Sun swings the other way. Standing at a point 38 degrees south of the equator, you would see the Sun rise above the eastern horizon and follow a path slanted 38 degrees toward the northern hemisphere (the upper left.)
So, the CNN snippet of “sunrise” was either a time-reversed sunset filmed in the USA, or a sunrise in the southern hemisphere. Economics (and suitable videography conditions) probably dictated the time-reversed sunset. Maybe it was cloudy at sunrise. Or an ugly building was in the way. Or it was just easier to use a stock shot of a sunset and run it backwards. Whatever the case, it was wrong.
