![]() During this time, the southern hemisphere experiences winter. In other words, the northern hemisphere gets the most amount of sunlight during the day between spring and fall until the sun reaches its peak in late June and gives us the summer solstice. This lasts until the North Pole moves far enough away from the sun and we get winter. When the North Pole is closest to the sun, the northern hemisphere experiences summer. The science that explains solstices has everything to do with Earth’s 23.5-degree obliquity (its axial tilt) as it orbits the sun. During an equinox, the sun is closest to the equator. This signals the beginning of spring (the vernal equinox) and fall (the autumnal equinox) each year. The occurrence gives us a day that is equal parts daytime and nighttime. ![]() Solstices and equinoxes share similarities, like the fact that they’re both ruled by the equator’s distance from the sun during each season.Įquinox comes from the Medieval Latin word equinoxium, which fuses aequus ( equal) with nox (night).Īn equinox occurs when the sun lines up so that the equator bisects it. While solstices are sometimes confused with equinoxes, they’re not the same thing. This happens twice a year, and the occurrence of the summer and winter solstices marks the longest and shortest two days of the year, respectively. A solstice is defined as an event when the sun is at its highest or lowest point in the sky. The word solstice is a Latin derivative of two words: s ol (sun) and sistere (stop, to be still). Here’s everything else you need to know about solstices. They mark the start of two of the four seasons and have influenced the culture and customs of ancient empires including the Romans, Greeks, and Chinese. So, what exactly do the solstices signify, and why do they matter?įor one, these events occur when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky by noon (summer) and inversely, when it reaches the lowest point in the sky at the same time (winter). In the southern hemisphere, it’s the opposite: our summer solstice is their start of winter. We have the summer solstice coming up on Saturday, Jand in a few months, the winter solstice (Monday, December 21) will be here, too.
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