Winter solstice, falling this year on Sunday, Dec. 21, marks the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. More precisely, winter officially begins at 6:03 p.m. EST — the moment when the Northern Hemisphere is pointed at its furthest distance from the sun. This means winter solstice boasts the longest night and the shortest day, and often colder temperatures, too. North America will only see nine hours and 32 minutes of daylight during the solstice, and 14 hours and 28 minutes of nighttime. The fact that we have seasons (Spring Summer Fall Winter) on Earth is entirely due to the tilt of our North-South axis (by 23.5 degrees) relative to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. This axis essentially remains fixed in space relative to the outside stars (thus The North Pole points very nearly to Polaris .. the North Star). Depending on where the Earth is in the orbit .. a given hemisphere will see the Sun as higher in the sky or lower in the sky. When the Sun is high in the sky, the weather is warmer ... summer! When the Sun is low in the sky, it is colder .. winter! (The reason for the seasons is often misunderstood to be the fact that the Earth is a little closer to the Sun part of the year, and farther away for the rest of the year. This is wrong - the closest the Earth gets to the Sun is actually in the Winter time .. and the farthest location is in the Summer time. ...Earths orbit is elliptical, not circular...Also, the difference in distance is only a few percentage points of the average distance .. this would not be enough to account for the large temperature changes between the seasons!) But the good news? If you’re not a fan of winter, from each day on after the solstice, the days will get longer and warmer until the calendar hits summer solstice, June 21, 2015. Summer solstice marks the first day of summer, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 18:57:15 +0000
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