{"id":86830,"date":"2025-10-20T14:46:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T14:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/86830\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T14:46:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T14:46:23","slug":"all-you-need-to-know-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/86830\/","title":{"rendered":"All you need to know"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SnowView at EarthSky Community Photos<\/a>. | Jonathan Charles Fox<\/a> captured this image in New York on the December solstice in 2024. Jonathan wrote: \u201cThis is my back yard #lovewhereyoulive.\u201d Thank you, Jonathan! It\u2019s certainly a great backyard.<\/p>\n

The December solstice marks the sun\u2019s southernmost point in the sky, for all of Earth, for this year. It comes at 15:03 UTC<\/a> (9:03 a.m. CST) on December 21. Though no world body has decreed it, we in the Northern Hemisphere will celebrate the first day of winter at this solstice. For us, it heralds the longest nights and shortest days of our year. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, people in the Southern Hemisphere will celebrate the first day of summer at this solstice. For them it marks the shortest nights and longest days.<\/p>\n

After this solstice, the sun will begin moving northward in the sky again. It\u2019s fun to track the northward movement of the sunsets on your horizon with pieces of tape on a window, or just by noticing the shifting sunset point from your favorite spot to observe.<\/p>\n

What is a solstice?<\/p>\n

The earliest people on Earth knew that the sun\u2019s path across the sky, the length of daylight, and the location of the sunrise and sunset all shifted in a regular way throughout the year. They built monuments such as Stonehenge<\/a> in England and Intihuatana<\/a> at Machu Picchu<\/a> in Peru to follow the sun\u2019s yearly progress.<\/p>\n

Today, we picture the solstice from the vantage point of space, and we know that the solstice is an astronomical event. It\u2019s caused by the tilt of Earth\u2019s axis and by its orbital motion around the sun.<\/p>\n

Earth doesn\u2019t orbit upright. Instead, it\u2019s tilted on its axis by 23.5 degrees<\/a>. Through the year, this tilt causes Earth\u2019s Northern and Southern Hemispheres to trade places in receiving the sun\u2019s light and warmth most directly. It\u2019s this tilt, not our distance from the sun, that causes winter and summer. <\/p>\n

In fact, we\u2019re closest to \u2013 not farthest from \u2013 the sun at the turn of every new year. At the same time, we in the Northern Hemisphere are moving into winter. That\u2019s because the Northern Hemisphere leans farthest away from the sun for the year around this time.<\/p>\n

\"AnimationOn the day of the December solstice, the sun takes its farthest pass south on the globe. Image via Jecowa\/ Wikimedia Commons<\/a> (CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>).
\nWhy isn\u2019t the earliest sunset on the shortest day?<\/p>\n

The December solstice marks the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and longest day in the Southern Hemisphere. But the earliest sunset \u2013 or earliest sunrise if you\u2019re south of the equator \u2013 happens before the December solstice.<\/p>\n

Instead of focusing on the time of sunset or sunrise, the key is in what is called true solar noon, which is the time of day that the sun reaches its highest point in its journey across your sky.<\/p>\n

In early December, true solar noon comes nearly 10 minutes earlier by the clock than it does at the solstice around December 21. With true noon coming later on the solstice, so will the sunrise and sunset times.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this discrepancy between clock time and sun time that causes the Northern Hemisphere\u2019s earliest sunset<\/a> and the Southern Hemisphere\u2019s earliest sunrise to precede the December solstice.<\/p>\n

The precise date of the earliest sunset (or earliest sunrise) depends on your latitude. But the sequence is always the same: earliest sunset, shortest day at the solstice, latest sunrise around early January. Or, for the Southern Hemisphere now, earliest sunrise, longest day at the solstice, latest sunset around early July.<\/p>\n

And so the cycle continues.<\/p>\n

\"FisheyeView at EarthSky Community Photos<\/a>. | Rob Ratkowski<\/a> took this all-sky view from Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. It shows the path of the sun across the sky at the solstices (top and bottom) and at the equinoxes (center). Thanks, Rob!
\n\"ManyView at EarthSky Community Photos<\/a>.| Jos\u00e9 Palma<\/a> in Mina S\u00e3o Domingos, Portugal, shared this solargram. He wrote: \u201cThe objective of this ultra-long exposure was to show in a single image the variation of the path of the sun and its altitude, between the summer solstice and the winter solstice, resulting in 183 days \u2013 4,392 hours \u2013 of exposure.\u201d Read more about this image<\/a>. Thank you, Jos\u00e9.
\nThe poles at the December solstice<\/p>\n

At the December solstice, Earth is positioned so the sun stays below the North Pole\u2019s horizon. Meanwhile, the sun is up 24 hours a day at the South Pole.<\/p>\n

All locations south of the equator have day lengths greater than 12 hours.<\/p>\n

All locations north of the equator have day lengths shorter than 12 hours.<\/p>\n

\"FourSatellite views of Earth on the solstices<\/a> and equinoxes. We are at the December solstice now. Read more about this image<\/a>. Images via NASA Earth Observatory<\/a>.
\nWhere should I look to see signs of the December solstice in nature?<\/p>\n

Everywhere.<\/p>\n

For all of Earth\u2019s creatures, nothing is so fundamental as the length of daylight. After all, the sun is the ultimate source of all light and warmth on Earth.<\/p>\n

In the Northern Hemisphere, you\u2019ll notice late dawns and early sunsets, the low arc of the sun across the sky each day, and how low the sun appears in the sky at local noon. Look at your noontime shadow, too. Around the time of the December solstice, it\u2019s your longest noontime shadow of the year.<\/p>\n

In the Southern Hemisphere, it\u2019s opposite. Dawn comes early, dusk comes late, the sun is high, and it\u2019s your shortest noontime shadow of the year.<\/p>\n

\"Year'sView at EarthSky Community Photos<\/a>. | Karl Diefenderfer<\/a> of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, wrote: \u201cVibrant winter\u2019s solstice sunrise.\u201d Thank you, Karl! By the way, the December solstice starts the year\u2019s shortest season.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: Happy solstice! The 2025 December solstice will fall on December 21. It\u2019s the shortest day for the Northern Hemisphere. And it\u2019s a great time to celebrate the seasons. <\/p>\n

Visit EarthSky\u2019s night sky guide<\/a><\/p>\n

Deborah Byrd
\n View Articles<\/a><\/p>\n

About the Author:<\/p>\n

Our Editor-in-Chief Deborah Byrd works to keep all the astronomy balls in the air between EarthSky’s website, YouTube page and social media platforms. She’s the primary editor of our popular daily newsletter and a frequent host of EarthSky livestreams. Deborah created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Prior to that, she had worked for the University of Texas McDonald Observatory since 1976, and created and produced their Star Date radio series. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. In 2020, she won the Education Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the largest organization of professional astronomers in North America. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. “Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers,” she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Jonathan Charles Fox captured this image in New York on the December…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[59610,59611,59609,85,46,141,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-86830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-22-minute","9":"tag-astronomy-essentials","10":"tag-dec-solstice-arrives-dec-21-2020-winter-begins","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}