GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 569298
Sunrise / sunset times on and above Polar Circle are wrong atleast in Finland
Last modified: 2009-12-09 14:12:23 UTC
Please describe the problem: During Christmas time I started to use gnome applet libgweather and noticed that Sunrise / sunset times around and above Polar Circle are wrong. This seems to be a problem atleast to sites at northern Finland : Enontekiö, Ivalo, Kittilä and Rovaniemi. Others are more or less ok. I haven't checked other countries. For example 19th of January 2009, applet gave following times to Rovaniemi: sunrise 19:01 and sunset 14:54. According applet during night time sun is shining ! Steps to reproduce: 1. If your computers local setting doesn't disturb trial, just select country = Finland. Then compare sunsire / sunset times at locations Kemi and Rovaniemi. There shouldn't be a very big difference between those times. 2. 3. Actual results: Expected results: Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: According one of finnsh translators for gnome (hile@iki.fi) Rovaniemi coordinates are ok. calculation problem ? During Cristmas sun doesn't rise or set (in real world) at some of those placies. Opposite happends (in real world) during summer time at some of these sites, sun doesn't set down at all. Today 27th, january 2009 : real times are Kemi = 09:32 and 15:28, Rovaniemi = 09:36 and 15:24 libgweather gave Kemi = 09:34 and 15:40, Rovaniemi = 08:10 and 15:26 There is an small error already at Kemi. During Christmas errors were several hours.
The patch in bug 564958 might contain some relevant fixes for this (someone would need to check).
They may reduce the error somewhat but the calculations will still probably be off when latitudes are within the Arctic or Antarctic circles. The code doesn't currently handle the case when the sun remains above the horizon for an entire calendar day. I'll take this one.
An improvement to the calculations has been checked in and will likely be included in 2.29.4.
This problem has been fixed in our software repository. The fix will go into the next software release. Thank you for your bug report.