Let me first explain what you're actually looking at — Page 455, Lesson 449

I want to walk you through a navigation table that you'll use constantly in real-world flight planning — the Sunset Table. This is the kind of data that lets you predict, to the minute, when the sun will set at a given latitude on a given date. And that matters for a very practical reason: it tells you when daylight ends, which drives decisions about night operations, fuel, and alternates. Let me first explain what you're actually looking at. The table is laid out with latitude down the left-hand side, and dates across the top. The latitudes run from N72 at the top, down through N70, N68, N66, N64, N62, N60, N58, N56, N54, and so on. The dates across the top run from November through December into January — you can see the day numbers 19, 22, 25, 28, then 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31, then 3. So this particular table covers the late autumn and early winter period. Now, the key thing to understand is the format of the times. Each entry is given in hours and minutes — you'll see values like 15 23, 14 51, 13 15. The first two digits are the hour, the next two are the minutes. So 15 23 means 15 hours 23 minutes, which is 3:23 PM in the afternoon. These are the local times of sunset. Here's the critical professional point I want you to grasp: the times are in UTC, not local time. This is a universal convention in aviation — we always work in Coordinated Universal Time to avoid confusion across time zones. So when you read a sunset time from this table, you're getting the UTC time of sunset for that latitude and date. Now let's look at the structure of the data and what it tells you. Notice how the times change as you move down the table — from higher latitudes to lower latitudes. At N72, the table shows blank entries — those dashes mean the sun doesn't set at all during that period; it's the polar day/night situation. As you move down to N70 and N68, you start seeing actual times. And here's the pattern: the higher the latitude, the earlier the sunset time. At N70 you might see 13 15, while at N60 you'd see 15 23. That's because in winter, higher latitudes have shorter days — the sun sets earlier. There's also a date-to-date variation within each latitude row. Look at how the times change as you move across the columns. At the start of November, the sunset times are later, and as you move into December, they get earlier — the days are shortening. Then around mid-December, you'll notice the times start to lengthen again — the days begin to get longer after the winter solstice. This is the seasonal variation captured in the table. Let me give you a concrete example of how to read this. Take N60 — that's a latitude you'll fly at frequently. On the first date column, you read 15 23. That means at 60 degrees north, on that November date, sunset occurs at 15 hours 23 minutes UTC. Move across to the December columns and you'll see the times drop — 15 03, 15 00, 14 57, 14 55, 14 54, 14 53 — reaching a minimum around 14 53. Then they start climbing back up: 14 55, 14 57, 14 59, 15 03, 15 07. That minimum is the winter solstice effect. Now, here's the practical application in flight planning. When you're planning a flight, you need to know whether you'll be operating in daylight or darkness. This table gives you the sunset time, and from that you can determine your night flying status. If your flight extends past sunset, you need to plan for night operations — which affects your fuel reserves, your alternate requirements, and your personal minimums. One more thing to notice: the table has a SUNSET label at the top, and you'll see the latitude column marked with Lat and the degree symbol. The rows are labeled with the latitude values like N72, N70, N68 — the N indicating north latitude. This is a northern hemisphere table. Let me also point out the precision of this data. These are not rounded approximations — they're given to the minute. That precision is important because in aviation, a few minutes of daylight can make the difference between a legal day operation and a night operation. You need that accuracy for your flight planning. So to summarize what you've learned: this is a sunset table giving UTC times of sunset for northern latitudes from N72 down to N54, across November, December, and January. The times are in hours and minutes UTC. Higher latitudes have earlier sunsets in winter, and the times reach a minimum around the winter solstice in mid-December before lengthening again. You use this to determine when daylight ends for your flight planning — specifically to know whether you'll be operating in day or night conditions. That's the core of this table. When you're ready, we can move on to how this connects with the sunrise table and the calculation of daylight hours.