Post #1 — Summer Solstice 2020
We could all use a little “cosmic relief” now and then — especially these days! … So, here‘s some for you. …..
TODAY (Sat.,6/20), at 2:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time — our hero “Mr. Sun” will be directly overhead for some lucky fish (or maybe boat) in the ocean … ~ 200 mi. NE of the Hawaiian islands — at the farthest-north latitude where the sun can EVER be seen straight UP ( so you have NO SHADOW ! ) : ~ 23½ degrees N.
In Santa Cruz, CA., the sun at that moment will be a little to the west of south, already past its peak of the day here. But today at OUR “SOLAR NOON” when the sun’s at its peak for the day here, the sun will also be at its high-point for the whole year: the highest in the sky that it can ever be seen FROM HERE — just 13½ degrees down DUE SOUTH of our OVERHEAD POINT, or “ZENITH”. (So today’s high-point will be higher up in the south than all other daily high-points.)
Today this solar-noon peak for us comes at 1:10 PM local time (Pacific Daylight). … (Wondering why this “solar-noon” high-point-for-the-day occurs more than an hour after 12-o’clock noon? That shift is mostly an effect of our being on Daylight Savings Time — an hour later than “standard” time.)
The word “solstice” basically says that “the sun [‘sol’] is ‘standing still’ [‘stice’, like ‘stasis’ or ‘stationary’].” A lot of folks assume that means standing still in time — in the sense that, e.g., the time of sunset stops getting later from one evening to the next, and now starts its return to earlier times. THAT WILL HAPPEN, soon — BUT NOT THIS EVENING ! Surprisingly, the latest sunSET for the whole year doesn’t happen until the 27th of June — about a week from now! And likewise, the earliest sunRISE already happened, about a week before this solstice day! Nevertheless, total duration of daylight (or sun-above-horizon time) for the whole year is still at its maximum, today. … I’ll write more later, about this topic of why “solstice” does NOT refer to extreme (“folding”) points of the sun’s setting and rising times.
The “turning-around” (and coming to a halt for just an instant, as when an upward-thrown ball reaches the very top of its trajectory) to which “solstice” refers, is much more directly & simply a spatial thing (involving direction, not time — the stuff of ~ Stonehenge).
The high-point-for-the-day of the sun is always when its direction is DUE SOUTH (as seen in this part of the world). Every day for these last six months (since the winter solstice) the sun-at-solar-noon has been climbing up that “MERIDIAN” (vertical-plane north-south “stairway to heaven”), crossing it higher and higher from day to day — until today when it begins return to descent from day to day. Correspondingly, the sunset position along the western horizon (AND sunrise position along eastern horizon) are at their farthest-north extreme-points TODAY, and come to a HALT in their northward progress — “solstice” — as the sun starts to “fly south for the winter” ! ***
Many other interesting things to tell you about this — but, hey, time flies when you’re having fun! ***
[ originally posted within a few minutes of our summer solstice! ]
“Dreams fly when freed by the SKY.” Celebrate this solar “SKY-mark” : Happy summer ! ***
Great post Joe! I like the emphasizing words! I can hear you speaking it almost. My solar app had Solar Noon at Pigeon Point at 1:11. PM, but alas the overcast sky prevented me from marking the towers shadow tip as a gnome sundial.
The last time I went to Chartes Cathedral, I got to see the nail in the floor and the hole in the stained glass window that lined up to mark the summer solstice. Here’s to clear and dark skies!
The sun is now flying South! I love that. You are a gem 🙂