Astaná

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A City with Six Names, and a Clock That Moved Toward the Sun

Astana has been called Akmolinsk, Tselinograd, Aqmola, Astana, Nur-Sultan and Astana again. Six names, five changes, two of them in the last seven years — Astana became Nur-Sultan in 2019 and reverted in 2022.

The temperature range is similarly wide. The record low is −51.6°C, set in January 1893; the record high is +41.6°C, in July 1936. That is a span of 93 degrees. The average January temperature is around −14.5°C, snow cover can last more than six months, and total annual precipitation is only about 340 mm.

It is the second coldest capital city in the world, after Ulaanbaatar.

And most of it did not exist thirty years ago. Kazakhstan moved its capital here from Almaty in 1997, to a site on the Ishim River surrounded by open steppe for hundreds of kilometres. The entire left bank of the city was built from nothing after that date. The population has gone from a few hundred thousand to around 1.4 million.

The clock: and in 2024 Astana did something almost nothing else in this series has done.

For 96 years Kazakhstan was split into two time zones — UTC+5 in the west and UTC+6 in the east, including Astana. The country spans 40°45′ of longitude, giving a solar time difference of 2 hours and 43 minutes between its eastern and western edges. By geography it could justify three or four zones.

On 1 March 2024, by government decree, the whole country moved to a single zone: UTC+5. Clocks in Astana, Almaty, Shymkent and twelve regions were turned back an hour.

The stated reason is the interesting part. Kazakh scientists argued that UTC+6 "does not correspond to natural solar time, which negatively affects biological rhythms and human health." The government chose the offset closer to the sun.

Astana sits at 71.4° east. Under UTC+6 it ran roughly 74 minutes ahead of its own solar noon. Under UTC+5 it runs about 14 minutes ahead.

Almost every other decision on this site went the other way. Madrid, Singapore, Istanbul and Reykjavík all rounded their clocks further from the sun. In 2024 Kazakhstan rounded back toward it.

Luz solar anual