Is the earth’s axis moving?

Answer

I understand that you think that the sun is delayed a bit, so to speak. You actually noticed that right! But the Earth’s axis is not changing.

The sun does not pass through the south at the same time every day. There is a double wave in the course of the year, which means that it is sometimes a bit late (about 15 minutes in November to about 15 minutes early (in February). In July it is not too bad, then the deviation is only 5 minutes That double wave is called the equation of time. If you google that term (google images) you will immediately see the graph. The causes of the equation of time are 1) the fact that the earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle, 2) the fact that the rotation axis of the Earth is not perpendicular to its orbital plane (resulting in the seasons).

But that still does not explain what you observe. The reason the Sun is “late” has to do with time zones. In winter we follow the time of 15° east longitude, with the result that the Sun here in Belgium and the Netherlands (at approximately 4° east longitude) is almost 45 minutes late. So the Sun does not reach the south until 12:45 pm on average. But in the summer it’s even worse because with summer time we follow the time zone of 30° east longitude and we put our watches one hour ahead. So then the Sun will pass in the south on average around 13h45. Then the Sun is about 1h45m behind what it should actually do. Of course, this is not the Sun’s fault, but our way of using time zones.

As a result, the Sun will indeed remain on the facade for a remarkably long time. The equation of time can temporarily strengthen or weaken that effect, depending on the period in the year.

In this answer, all numbers are ‘approximately’ because they depend to some extent on the concrete place. For a fellow countryman in Zeeland, the effect will be even stronger because he is located further west in front of you, and therefore further from the meridian of 30° east longitude.