THE RISING SUN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19135, 2 October 1936, Page 9

THE RISING SUN

ITS FIRST APPEARANCE 30,000 CLUB INQUIRY Recently the Gisborne 30,030 Club communicated with the Dominion Observatory, Wellington, inquiring as to the rising of the sun on the East Coast and asking whether or not New Zealand could lay claim to be the most easterly country in,the world. In reply the actingdirector of the Dominion Observatory, Mr. R. Hayes, has forwarded the following letter: "Mount. Hikurangi, East Coast, is the first land in the. eastern hemisphere (with the exception possibly of the Bounty and Antipodes Islands to the south-east of New Zealand) on which the sun rises at certain times of the year. This occurs in the months of October, November, most of December, January and February. At the time ol our summer solstice, December 21, Alt. kailarau in the Kaikouras receives the rising sun about the same time as Mount Hikurangi. "During the remaining period, from March to September, the sun rises on parts of eastern Siberia and the Fiji Islands, before it reaches any part of New Zealand. "Regarding your second, question, East Cape is'not the most eastern point of the eastern' hemisphere. The meridian of longitude, 180 deg., which marks the boundary between the eastern and western hemispheres actually crosses part of eastern Siberia; so that there the land in the eastern hemisphere runs right up to the. 180th meridian; whereas East Cape is about 76 miles west of it."