I came across this article several weeks ago, perhaps on Apple News, and those of you who own an Apple Watch may be interested. My wife and I have owned Apple Watches since they were first released and really like them but I've pretty much kept the Apple Watch face pretty simple...boring, some might say. 😊
After reading the article and trying the Solar Watch Face, I've grown to be a fan.
I'm enclosing the text of the article below but you may want to check out the photos and description at the link to really get a feel for the face.
The Eerie Beauty Of The Apple Watch Solar Face, And The Anatomy Of NightfallThere were 10 basic Apple Watch faces when the Apple Watch launched in 2014, and since then, the number has increased significantly, to put it mildly. Today, there are 31 groups of faces, which range from Activity to X-Large, and if you include all the variations in each group and then add in all the possible permutations of colors and complications, you get a total which is, if not too many to count, certainly laborious to calculate. Indeed, if you like the Apple Watch at all, you can probably find almost anything to suit your mood or a change of taste (and if you want to add in the number of different experiences you can create with all the possible strap variations, the number becomes truly astronomical).
My personal favorites have always included some of the astronomically oriented Apple Watch faces, including the planetarium face (which lets you see the positions of all the planets past, present, and future by turning the crown). The original version of the Solar face was the Solar Graph, which shows the Sun's elevation in the sky, as well as the time of sunrise, solar noon, sunset, twilight, and nightfall proper. Solar noon is of interest as it is the moment when the Sun is actually at its zenith, which is generally not at noon on the clock. This is due to the fact that civil time is the time across an entire time zone, and the problem is worsened in parts of the world that observe daylight saving time.
As of WatchOS 6, which was introduced last September, there is a new Solar watch face.
This one is simply called the Solar Dial, and it is a remarkably charming thing. It has been described as a miniature sundial for the wrist, but it is rather more like having a sundial and the Sun itself on your wrist, both at the same time. Moreover, it bears a certain resemblance to some rather exotic complications found in mechanical watches, about which more later.The Solar Dial consists of a 24-hour dial with 12 (noon) at the top and 24 (midnight) at the bottom. An hour hand moves once around the dial per day, and attached to the hour hand is miniature representation of the Sun. The portion of the dial that's in light blue represents the number of daylight hours, and the portion in dark blue, night; the boundaries between each section mark sunrise and sunset. Opposite the Sun on the 24-hour hand is a smaller dial which shows the hours and minutes, in either an analog or digital format.
The four corners of the watch face are taken up with customizable complications (in my case, from the upper left clockwise: world time, date, activity tracker, and workout). Tapping the Solar Dial watch face will allow you to see whether it's day, or night, or one of the various phases of twilight. You can also see how many hours of daylight there are.
The color of the sky also changes depending on the time of day, and during the twilight hours, you get a very pretty transition from blue, to a deeper blue, to a lovely pale pink as the solar disk begins to sink below the horizon.
You can rotate the crown to show you what time sunset takes place, as well as the various phases of twilight. You'll also see, in yellow numbers in the sub-dial, how many hours it is from the current time to sunset, or other solar astronomical events.
You'll also notice that for both dawn and sunset, there are a total of four small dots spanning the period of time during which the sky goes from sunlit to completely dark. Above, the 24-hour hand and Sun disk are at Sunset. Sunset is very specifically defined, as is sunrise: They are the moments when the upper limb (edge) of the Sun's disk disappears below, or appears above, the horizon. (The precise definition is the moment when the edge of the upper limb is tangent to the horizon line). Interestingly enough, because of the refraction of the Sun's image in the Earth's atmosphere, at the moment of visible sunset from an observer's position, the Sun is actually already just slightly more than one solar diameter below the horizon.
However, the disappearance of the Sun's upper limb below the horizon does not mean night falls instantly, like someone shutting off a light switch. Instead, it is the beginning of a period called twilight. Twilight is the period between sunset and true nightfall, when the last bit of sunlight finally vanishes, and the sky becomes completely dark. Twilight, as it turns out, is further divided into three phases: Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight, and Astronomical Twilight, and it is the phases of twilight, plus sunset, which are indicated by the four dots clustered at sundown. As each type of twilight darkens, it reaches its Dusk phase, which marks the transition into the next Twilight period. (The word twilight, incidentally, is Old English in origin ... appropriately enough for a term describing visual obscurity, it is unclear what the prefix "twi" actually means; the word may mean, "half light.")
In order, therefore, the sequence starting at Sunset is: Sunset, Civil Twilight, Civil Dusk; Nautical Twilight, Nautical Dusk; Astronomical Twilight; Astronomical Dusk ... and finally, Night proper. This is followed by Solar Midnight, which is the moment when the Sun is at its nadir on the celestial sphere from the standpoint of the observer.
Particularly in the days before ubiquitous nocturnal electrical lights, experiencing the fall of night must have been a source of anxiety – you can only light so many candles, and the fading of light from the sky must have always had a faint miasma of death about it. The civilized person in us is sure the Sun will come up again, but in our animal hearts, we are perhaps less certain. Shakespeare captured the irrational mood of the hours of darkness well in that darkest of plays, Hamlet, with the titular character's soliloquy:
"Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on."
Twilight has its own rich vocabulary, including the word crepuscular; "that which is related to twilight." Animals that are chiefly active during the twilight of dawn or nightfall are called crepuscular animals; my favorite of these, and maybe yours too, is the firefly.