The last sunset on mainland Europe

Abstract

This paper documents the places in mainland Europe at which the sun sets latest, by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), on any given day (distortion due to differences in local standard times is ignored). In contradiction to the naïve assumption that the sun always sets latest at the westernmost point, the point of last sunset changes cyclically over the course of a year due to the changing orientation of the axis of the Earth with respect to the sun. Specifically, between the winter and summer solstices the last sunset shifts successively from Cabo de Sao Vicente (Portugal) to Cabo da Roca (Portugal) to Cabo Tourinan (Spain) to a site near Aglapsvik (Norway) to a location in the Norwegian municipality of Masoy south of Havoysund; and it shifts back again between the summer and winter solstices. There are two days in the year (April 24th and August 18th) on which the last sunset of mainland Europe (shared in those days effectively by Cabo Tourinan and the Aglapsvik area) coincides with the last sunset of mainland Africa, at a site in Western Sahara near Cap Blanc. A similar analysis of the first Spanish sunrise shows that from April 22nd to August 20th it occurs on the Costa Brava at Cap de Creus (Catalonia), and the rest of the year at Punta de s'Espero (Balearic Islands), the easternmost point of Spain.