Chasing the horizon: How long was the longest sunset in history?

Astronauts on the International Space Station, which orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, can see sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets in the same day. It approaches the fantasy of fiction that arises in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic ‘The Little Prince’, when the boy from asteroid B-612 tells the narrator that he has already seen the sunset 44 times in one day. However, we earthlings have never been able to break this record, and we haven’t been yet. That’s not to say we haven’t achieved others.

It would be necessary, science assures, to be able to fly at the speed of 1,000 meters per hour to follow in a constant the light that scales the vertices of the Earth. No aircraft or aircraft has reached that figure, to date. In addition, in order not to lose the course of the sun’s rays, it would be necessary to make this route along the equator and always to the west.

Why does the sky turn orange during sunset?

ACyV

Time is this, a succession of moments that last as long as the glare lasts, and so the days and nights occur, as our planet rotates to the east, in an incessant rotation that from its interior we only seem to appreciate at two very specific moments: dawn and dusk.

Across all 24 time zones

The visual touch of that absolute light bumping into the reliefs of the life we know has become a goal, and there are those who try to reach it. In 2014, already retired NATO pilot Jonathan Nicol and photographer Simon Roberts tried together track the sunset around the world in all 24 time zones as part of an advertising campaign for the ‘Citizen’ watch brand, but he did not do it across the equator, but near the North Pole with the aim of accuracy.

On the globe, as we move towards the poles, the circumference around the axis of rotation decreases, so it is in these areas that the alterations are seen the fastest, and the best way to stay in the same moment for as long as humanly possible.

The result of the mission was captured in ‘Chasing Horizons’, a global short film by ‘Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo’ as part of the promotion of the Eco-Drive Satellite Wave F100 watch. To carry it out, the team flew from Iceland, in a northeasterly direction, until reaching the 80th parallel north and zero degrees of longitude. Then he turned around to start his journey in reverse.

An 8-hour sunset

The F100 model revolutionized the watchmaking industry by introducing the ability to determine which time zone you are in and change it automatically in a margin of three seconds (something common for smartphone watches, but that seemed impossible for a wristwatch). In this way, it was about putting him to the test, placing him at the limit of deception: “Instead of traveling across the Earth from one time zone to another, we decided to remain constant in space above the Earth and let the time zones come to us, in fact, living in the same hour as long as we could“, said Michael Farr, creative and executive director of the firm.

The plan, in fact, was even more ambitious, with Russia in mind to be able to refuel in Siberia. However, geopolitical reasons, the team finally only he was able to fly in suspension to the west for a total of eight hours. “We left Reykjavik in Iceland and continuously kept up with the sunset for eight hours before landing at our final destination in the Arctic Circle,” says Vasco Vicente, art director of Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam. And it was not little, not at all easy either.

To achieve the suspended animation effect shown in its images, the plane needed to head in the opposite direction to the Earth’s rotation at the exact latitude of 80 degrees, the point at which the planet rotates at its lowest speed of 289.95 km/h, along all time zones of the planet. Arrived at 18:30, the capture of the photographs took place. “We had to keep the aircraft stable and at a constant speed to allow the Earth to rotate underneath at the same time we ensure the calculation of the inclination of the sun and the Earth to capture the longest possible sunset,” adds Vicente.

Astronauts on the International Space Station, which orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, can see sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets in the same day. It approaches the fantasy of fiction that arises in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic ‘The Little Prince’, when the boy from asteroid B-612 tells the narrator that he has already seen the sunset 44 times in one day. However, we earthlings have never been able to break this record, and we haven’t been yet. That’s not to say we haven’t achieved others.