{"id":203326,"date":"2025-12-21T09:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T09:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/203326\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T09:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T09:35:09","slug":"winter-solstice-sunrise-from-ancient-tomb-at-newgrange-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/203326\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Solstice sunrise from ancient tomb at Newgrange \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Thousands of people gathered at Newgrange, Co Meath to watch the Winter Solstice on Sunday morning. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/office-of-public-works\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/office-of-public-works\/\">The Office of Public Works<\/a> (OPW) and National Monuments Services (NMS) of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage arranged for a livestream to be broadcast from the ancient tomb at Newgrange from 8.40am. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Winter Solstice is an astronomical phenomenon that marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year. In the northern hemisphere, the Winter Solstice occurs on December 21st when the sun shines directly over the tropic of Capricorn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">At sunrise on the shortest day of the year, for 17 minutes, direct sunlight, weather conditions allowing, can enter the Newgrange monument, not through the doorway, but through the specially contrived small opening above the entrance known as the \u201croof box\u201d, to illuminate the chamber.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Although there was a mostly clear sky, the chamber failed to be illuminated by the sun due to some cloud cover.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"The winter solstice at the chamber at Newgrange, Co Meath December 21st, 2025\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/DIPWRDJWKJFGTMFZEYMBXFPW5E.png\"   width=\"800\" height=\"450\"\/>The winter solstice at the chamber at Newgrange, Co Meath December 21st, 2025 <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The event was streamed on the OPW\u2019s website and YouTube site as well as on <a href=\"https:\/\/heritageireland.ie\/visit\/newgrange-winter-solstice-2025\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/heritageireland.ie\/visit\/newgrange-winter-solstice-2025\/\">heritageireland.ie<\/a>, and on the RT\u00c9 Player.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The OPW said as there was limited on-site access, it was advising the public to experience the event through the online broadcast at home. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"The winter solstice at the chamber at Newgrange, Co Meath December 21st, 2025\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ITXWJ2SAJ5GEXDYU5RSXGPDO3M.png\"   width=\"800\" height=\"450\"\/>The winter solstice at the chamber at Newgrange, Co Meath December 21st, 2025 <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Access to the chamber inside Newgrange for sunrise is restricted to solstice lottery draw winners.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The winter solstice sunrise was previously streamed live from Newgrange in 2021 amid Covid-19 restrictions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Celebrations at Br\u00fa no B\u00f3inne will continue on Sunday evening at Dowth where the passage tomb is aligned with the solstice sunset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of people gathered at Newgrange, Co Meath to watch the Winter Solstice on Sunday morning. The Office&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,32235],"class_list":["post-203326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-office-of-public-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}