Expedition Arctic Ocean 2026, blog post 14: Where the sun sets in the North

We had our first sunset last night. Well, I think it set although it was hard to tell. According to online sun angle calculators the sun was entirely below the horizon, yet we continued to see what appeared to be a sliver of sun hovering above the horizon for what seemed like hours.

I eventually went to bed, but the night owls on the ship said that sliver never went away and eventually the sun just rose up again. Perhaps it was a bit of refraction of the sunlight around the Earth, giving us a little taste of the sun even as it was below the horizon. All this action was out behind Oden as we cruised directly to the south. That means a sunset directly to the North! This is a unique phenomenon that happens on the first sunset of the year for locations that are north of the Arctic Circle.

Out here, the sun has been simply circling the sky, a bit higher in the sky during the “day” and then a bit lower in the sky at “night,” but still just circling. Eventually that circling gets closer and closer to the horizon, until last night when it finally took the dip below…. directly to the north. Since the change in sun elevation angle is so little during the day, it means the sunset process is very prolonged. We were fortunate to have mostly clear skies with only some high cirrus clouds to capture a bit of the pink, allowing the horizon to glow in oranges.

Such a remarkable scene, and it starts to signify that our trip is heading back to lower latitudes and that the season is really turning. Within about one week at this location the sun will transition to being above the horizon for only 12 hours out of the day, and then another week later, it will dip entirely below the horizon for its winter slumber, leaving this place in darkness until sometime next March.

What a spectacular place!

/Matthew Shupe