Today’s Greatitude

A solstice isn’t a whole day. Instead, it’s a moment, when the sun is farthest north in our sky.

In 2024, the solstice moment will fall at 20:51 UTC (or Grenwich Mean Time) on Thursday, June 20.

Ancient cultures knew that the sun’s 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 the ones at Stonehenge in England and at Machu Picchu in Peru to follow the sun’s yearly progress.

Today, we know that the solstice is caused by Earth’s tilt on its axis and by its orbital motion around the sun. The Earth doesn’t orbit upright with respect to the plane of our orbit around the sun.

So it’s Earth’s tilt – not our distance from the sun – that causes winter and summer.

In fact, our planet is closest to the sun in January, and farthest from the sun in July, during the Northern Hemisphere summer.

Either way, let’s celebrate the longest daylight day in our year!!