Where is the Sun during the solstice?ĭuring the summer solstice, the Sun is at its furthest point north of the celestial equator and remains at almost the same declination for around two weeks. The angle of tilt cycles between 21.5 degrees and 24.5 degrees, in an astronomical cycle that occurs over a period of around 41,000 years.
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2016 equinox date series#
In addition to the series of bombardments endured by the Earth is its early days, this has resulted in a tilted axis. Gravitational forces from the Sun and Moon, as well as the larger planets in the Solar System, Jupiter and Saturn, exert a pull on the Earth. This is thanks to the consistent direct sunlight, and, as a result, the Sun will always rise around 6am and set around 6pm every day. Whereas during the winter months, or ‘polar night’, the Sun doesn’t rise from mid-November to late January.ĭuring the summer months the sun falls low in the sky at Svalbard but never sets, casting a warm glow across the landscape © Getty imagesĪt places along the equator (0 degrees latitude), in Kenya for example, there’s very little change in the amount of daylight hours all year round. At Svalbard, for example, the Sun doesn’t set from around 20 April and 20 August and remains above the horizon providing 24-hour sunlight.
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You’ve probably heard of countries in the Arctic circle being referred to as ‘the land of the midnight Sun’. At the poles, there is extreme variation between the summer and winter solstices. The solstice affects different latitudes in different ways. How the solstices affect different latitudes Our seasons are subject to something called a ‘seasonal temperature lag’, and this is because it takes a while for the maximum heating effect on air temperatures to occur.Īs the oceans and land masses release the heat absorbed from the longer days back into the atmosphere, this will typically lead to an increase in temperatures later in July and August. This is because land temperatures are still relatively cool thanks to the preceding spring. This means we wouldn’t have seasons as we know them, although we may have ‘climate zones’.īut the solstice is not necessarily the hottest day, which typically occurs during July or August in the northern hemisphere. If the Earth were not tilted, the Sun would remain directly above the Earth’s equator for the entire year. To put it simply, when one of the poles is tilted more towards the Sun, that hemisphere receives more sunlight than the other hemisphere, giving us summer. Similarly, during the winter solstice, the northern hemisphere is tilted furthest away from the Sun. This means that during the summer Solstice, the northern hemisphere is at its maximum tilt towards the Sun, resulting in the longer daylight hours. The Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted by around 23.4 degrees relative to its orbit around the Sun. The solstices (and the equinoxes) are the result of Earth’s tilt and its orbit around the Sun. The summer solstice is when the Sun reaches its highest point in the sky, and here in the northern hemisphere, that results in the longest day of the year. There are two solstices every year, one in June and one in December. The summer solstice marks the first day of astronomical summer, and the precise time of the solstice will be at 10:13am BST. The summer solstice is on Tuesday 21 June 2022.