Winter Solstice: The Shortest Day of the Year!
What is it – and why will our mornings get darker for a while?
What is it?
The shortest day of the year is known as the Winter Solstice. It occurs when the sun's daily maximum height in the sky is at its lowest, and the North Pole is tilted furthest away from the sun. This results in the least number of daylight hours and the longest night of the year.
The Solstice is celebrated by druids and pagans as the ‘re-birth’ of the sun for the New Year. In the UK, thousands gather each year to mark the occasion at Stonehenge in Somerset.
When is it?
The Winter Solstice occurs in December in the Northern Hemisphere, and June in the Southern Hemisphere.
The date itself is not fixed: the phenomenon does not always occur on 21st of December in the Northern Hemisphere. Sometimes it arrives in the early hours of December 22nd, which will happen next year. The hour also fluctuates: last year's Solstice arrived at 17:11, whereas next year's is predicted to be at 04:38.
Why will mornings continue to get darker after the Solstice?
A solar day is rarely exactly 24 hours. Therefore, the sun lags behind the clock for part of the year, and speeds ahead of it for another part of the year.
The length of a solar day can vary. Mainly because the axis of the Earth's rotation is tilted - 23.5 degrees from vertical - and because its speed fluctuates as it orbits the sun, accelerating when it’s closer to the star's gravitational pull and decelerating when further away.
It takes a while for the clock and the solar days to align: evenings draw in towards their earliest sunset a couple of weeks before the shortest day, and mornings continue to get darker until a couple of weeks after.
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