NavList:

July 26 is one of the extremal points in the equation of time. The Sun is on-time around June 13 every year and again on September 2, but during these lazy days in early summer it falls behind. It reaches a local minimum around 1100 UT Saturday morning. The Sun will then be 6 minutes and 32 seconds slow. After that it's all uphill to election day (US election day happens to be near the maximum of the equation of time curve). On November 4, the Sun will be fast by 16:25. That's a 19 minute change in a bit more than a hundred days, or on average just about 11 seconds every day. So if you watch the Sun come to the meridian every day during the next few months and time it with a good clock, you'll find that it gets to the meridian about 11 seconds ahead of the previous day's time (that's on average --the maximum rate in mid-September is about 50% greater). This also means that the equation of time will be teaming up with the falling declination of the Sun making sunsets earlier at an even faster rate. Winter is coming...

-FER