Thousands enjoy ‘mildest’ winter solstice at Stonehenge

The days will gradually get longer from here until the summer solstice on June 21, 2016.

In the meantime, happy solstice! The summer solstice is when the sun’s rays are farthest north over the Tropic of Cancer, giving us our longest day and summer.

At the Winter Solstice, we in the Northern Hemisphere are leaning most away from the sun.

The shortest day of the year is nearly here – with those dreaded dark evenings and murky mornings about to open out a little.

Even though the solstice is the beginning of winter, it definitely won’t be the coldest day of the year.

The sun will rise over Stonehenge at 8.04am on Tuesday morning and a spokesman from English Heritage, which looks after the prehistoric monument, said they expect a similar number of people to travel to the Wiltshire site as a year ago, when around 5,000 people made their way to the south of England for the event.

The shortest day of the year in 2015 will be on Tuesday, that’s December 22.

The whole world marks the solstice at the same time, and this year that time was 4:49 a.m. Universal Time on December 22. This is the reason the northern and southern hemispheres take turns experiencing minimum and maximum amounts of sunlight.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice falls on the 21st or 22nd of December each year.

Solstice in Latin literally means stopping of the sun. This means the Sun will reach its most southern position on the sky.

Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied across cultures, but many have held recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time. “And both famously face the winter solstice sunrise”.

In the summer it is the opposite, with the Earth inclined towards the sun, with the summer solstice marking the height of this period and giving us our longest day. The latest sunrise doesn’t happen until a few days after the solstice, on December 26 at 10:15 AM.

Senior Druid, King Arthur Pendragon said the solstice celebrates the coming of the new sun.