Day and night

OUR SPINNING EARTH
We have day and night because the Earth is spinning on its axis. It is actually spinning really fast. If you were standing on the equator you would be travelling round at roughly 1600 km/hour (1000 mph)!

It takes about 24 hours for the earth to spin once and we call this time ONE DAY. There are 365 days in one year.

In one day every point on the Earth’s surface will come out of night, go through a day, dusk and then into night once more.

DUSK
Dusk is due to the sunlight filtering through the atmosphere of the Earth. On a planet or moon with no atmosphere the transfer from day to night would happen suddenly with no dusk.

SUNRISE AND SUNSET
The Sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This means that people in countries further east of you will move into daylight first and so sunrise will be earlier the further east you go.



The first picture is of the sunrise in the east and the second one shows the sunset in the west.