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The winter solstice occurs during the hemisphere's winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is the December solstice (December 21 or 22) and in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the June solstice (June 20 or 21). Although the winter solstice itself lasts only a moment, the term also refers to the day on which it occurs.
The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, marking the period with the fewest hours of daylight. It also represents the longest night of the year, and the time when the sun is at its ...
The lengths of time when the sun is up are longer around the summer solstice and shorter around the winter solstice, except near the equator. When the Sun's path crosses the equator, the length of the nights at latitudes +L° and −L° are of equal length. This is known as an equinox. There are two solstices and two equinoxes in a tropical year.
Month December depicted in Hans Bol's and Adriaen Collart's Emblematica Evangelica.. December contains the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the day with the fewest daylight hours, and the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, the day with the most daylight hours (excluding polar regions in both cases, which consistently have none or 24 hours, respectively, near the solstice).
The word winter comes from an old Germanic word for “time of water,” a reference to the heavy rain and snow this time of year, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The days are short and the nights are long. That can only mean one thing: The winter solstice is coming. The first day of winter for the northern hemisphere of Earth will begin on Dec. 21 at ...
The December-solstice solar year is the solar year based on the December solstice. It is thus the length of time between adjacent December solstices. The length of the December-solstice year has been relatively stable between 6000 BC and AD 2000, in the range of 49 minutes 30 seconds to 50 minutes in excess of 365 days 5 hours.
The winter solstice occurs because of the Earth's tilt as it rotates around the sun. When the Northern Hemisphere tilts away from the sun, the nights last longer. The longest night happens on the ...