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Stillsun

The Sun shines bright on the Northern Hemisphere today, the day of the Summer Solstice. (For some it'll be tomorrow because of time zones; the solstice occurs at the same moment for everyone on Earth, but local times vary). And of course it's the Winter Solstice in that... other... hemisphere.

So instead of randomly selecting a link, I've picked this one to talk about today.

    What is the summer solstice? An astronomer explains  

Nothing new or shocking here, but there are always reasons to go over the basics.

The summer solstice marks the official start of summer.

Before anyone from that... other... hemisphere freaks out, that statement is true globally (it's just the solstices are switched).

Well... it's definitionally true for what we call astronomical summer, solstice to equinox. There's also meteorological summer, which runs from Gregorian dates June 1 to August 31; US marketing summer, which runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day; and some Northern cultural definitions of summer, which go from roughly May 1 to August 1, with the summer solstice near the middle of the season.

Confusing? Sure. Here, we're only talking about astronomical summer.

It brings the longest day and shortest night of the year for the 88% of Earth’s people who live in the Northern Hemisphere.

But we appreciate the other 12%. They keep the important hemisphere from getting too crowded.

Astronomers can calculate an exact moment for the solstice, when Earth reaches the point in its orbit where the North Pole is angled closest to the Sun.

"Illusion! Fakery! Sphereist conspiracy!"

From Earth, the Sun will appear farthest north relative to the stars. People living on the Tropic of Cancer, 23.5 degrees north of the Equator, will see the Sun pass straight overhead at noon.

Another way to put it is that if you're standing at the North Pole, the Sun reaches its highest point above the horizon. Oh, and watch out for bears. Hope you brought a coat.

The Sun’s angle relative to Earth’s equator changes so gradually close to the solstices that, without instruments, the shift is difficult to perceive for about 10 days. This is the origin of the word solstice, which means “solar standstill.”

As I pointed out yesterday, we have lots of Latin-root terms that we use, especially in science. But in this case, I feel like the Germanic equivalent would actually be way cooler: "Stillsun." Maybe it's just me, but I think that's more badass.

Both can be misleading, though. The Earth doesn't stop turning, so from our spinning point of view, the Sun never really stands still; it just reaches its most northern or southern excursion.

Monuments at Stonehenge in England, Karnak in Egypt, and Chankillo in Peru reveal that people around the world have taken note of the Sun’s northern and southern travels for more than 5,000 years.

Well, there's two that I didn't mention yesterday.

We know little about the people who built Stonehenge, or why they went to such great effort to construct it — moving multi-ton stones from rock outcrops as far as 140 miles away.

And yet, it is impossible to speculate about it without referencing This Is Spinal Tap.