Summer Solstice 2013 has arrived! – My Word with Douglas E. Welch

I almost let it slip by without notice, but the Summer Solstice occurs tomorrow morning, June 21 at 5:04 UTC. The solstice is just one of those ways of marking the passing seasons and the passing years. In the past, there was much importance ascribed to the day and celebrations were commonplace. A couple of years ago, we were even lucky enough to be at Stonehenge in Salisbury, UK on the solstice. We didn’t great the sunrise with the other thousands of people, but visited later in the day with far fewer, and far less rowdy, people. (SMILE)

Here is a “long picture” video from our visit.

So what is the Summer Solstice? You can start your exploration with this Wikipedia article.

Summer Solstice

“The summer solstice occurs when the tilt of a planet’s semi-axis, in either the northern or the southern hemisphere, is most inclined toward the star (sun) that it orbits. Earth’s maximum axial tilt toward the sun is 23° 26′. This happens twice each year, at which times the sun reaches its highest position in the sky as seen from the north or the south pole.

The summer solstice occurs during a hemisphere’s summer. This is northern solstice in the northern hemisphere and the southern solstice in the southern hemisphere. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the summer solstice occurs some time between December 20 and December 23 each year in the southern hemisphere[2] and between June 20 and June 22 in the northern hemisphere[3] in reference to UTC.[4]

Though the summer solstice is an instant in time, the term is also colloquially used like midsummer to refer to the day on which it occurs. The summer solstice occurs on the day that has the longest period of daylight – except in the polar regions, where daylight is continuous, from a few days to six months around the summer solstice.

Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied among cultures, but most recognize the event in some way with holidays, festivals, and rituals around that time with themes of religion or fertility.[5]
Solstice is derived from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).” — Wikipedia.org

I often touch on the Summer Solstice in my writing. Here are a few links from my other blogs.