Polaris and Paris at Midnight

摘要

A winter or two ago, I was flying from Amsterdam to Portland, Oregon. Our flight was scheduled to be 10.5 hours in duration. What makes this trip difficult to fly in the winter is that it's dark most of the way. As expected, we took off that morning in sunlight, but it didn't take long for us to climb enough of the Earth's latitude to put the sun far off to our south.