FLASH NEWS
Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year
2023-12-21 13:57:07 / BOTA
Since the summer solstice in June, days have shortened and nights have lengthened in the Northern Hemisphere. But this is about to backfire.
The winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the first official day of winter, is Thursday, December 21 this year.
The way the solstices work, along with the spring and autumn equinoxes, has fascinated people for thousands of years. It is a day when science mixes with ancient traditions around the world.
The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere, when the sun appears in its southernmost position, directly above the Tropic of Capricorn.
The situation is the opposite in the southern hemisphere, where only about 10% of the world's population lives.
There, the December solstice marks the longest day of the year and the start of summer in countries such as Argentina, Madagascar, New Zealand and South Africa.
The solstice usually but not always occurs on December 21st. The date when the solstice occurs can move forward or backward by a day because the solar year (the time it takes for the sun to reappear in the same place as seen from Earth) does not exactly match our calendar year.
If you want to be super precise in your observations, the exact time of the 2023 winter solstice worldwide will be 3:27 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on Thursday, according to Earthsky.org and the Farmers' Almanac.
Due to time zone differences, Europe, Africa and Asia will technically mark their winter solstice on Friday, December 22. Below are some examples of when 3:27 UTC will be for various local times around the Northern Hemisphere.
• Tokyo, Japan: 12:27 p.m. Friday
• Bangkok, Thailand: 10:27 a.m. Friday
• Calcutta, India: 8:57 a.m. Friday
• Istanbul, Turkey: 6:27 a.m. Friday
• Helsinki, Finland: 5:27 a.m. Friday
• Milan, Italy: 4:27 a.m. Friday
• Halifax, Nova Scotia: 11:27 p.m. Thursday
• Baltimore, Maryland: 10:27 p.m. Thursday
• Mexico City: 21:27 Thursday
• San Francisco, Calif.: 7:27 p.m. Thursday
• Honolulu, Hawaii: 5:27 p.m. Thursday
Because the Earth is tilted on its axis of rotation, we have changing seasons. As the planet moves around the sun, each hemisphere experiences winter when tilted away from the sun and summer when tilted toward the sun.
Scientists aren't entirely sure how this happened, but they think that billions of years ago, as the solar system was taking shape, the Earth was subject to violent collisions that caused it to tilt on its axis.
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