"the planet converts 40 trillion watts of solar energy into standing produce"
E. O. Wilson, The Future of Life, 2002, P. 34.
"Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through him."
"The Canticle of the Sun," St. Francis of Assisi.
"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;"
William Shakespeare - Sonnet #130
Solar radiation or radiant energy is light and more. By knowing the shape of the shadow cast by the sun during the day and particulalry at noon, one can determine where they are with respect to latitude from the angle of the of the shadow.
Place is not just a location or terrain where life intersects the conditions that are optimal for existence (niche), instead it is the set of opportunities where potential energy conspires with a host of collaborating forms of life that enable one another to nourish a living community (biocoenose) to the extent that material wealth is created, stored and used to facilitate new life as the older life declines, decays, and passes away.
Sun's position in the northern hemisphere is always in the southern half of the sky.
Every setting is characterized by a relationship to the sun, the earth and water. These are three fundamental components of a habitat. They are the inorganic conditions of existence summed up in a triad. The concept is simple: the sun determines where you are, the Earth determines what you are and water determines how you are. Forget these three concepts and you are dead.
The above diagram begins with location based on the relation to the sun over the course of a year.
A reason for the apparent shift of the sun in relations to places on Earth in the course of a year is due to the tilt of the Earth on its axis of rotation. Nourishment of plants and bacteria as well as the reproductive cycles of all life on earth are tied to the seasonal changes that are largely the result of the planet's tilt of 23.5 degrees on its axis of rotation about the sun.
The annual movement of the earth about the sun, due to the tilt of the planet's axis generates the seasons.
Art imitates life .
Sunset at Mt. Desert Island, Maine, Childe Hassam, 1902
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