Summer solstice brings longest daylight

A full moon and the summer solstice will both occur at the same time in North America: June 20, around 06:30 p.m. EDT. The official start to summer, known as the Summer Solstice, is just three days away and temps are on point.

The start of summer brings the longest day of the year, or the summer solstice.

For Latvians, the celebration of the summer solstice is called Jāņi Day when locals in Riga hold feasts with traditional Lïgo foods such as bacon-filled pie, sweet beer and caraway seeds.

The stones have been open to all for the solstice since 2000, and in the years since as many as 40,000 people have attended on some years, with only a handful of arrests each year.

During this time of year, we see our earliest sunrise and our latest sunset. The birds will likely be singing and chirping at all hours, as they have been doing for the past month, while the sun reaches its northernmost point in the sky, +23.5 degrees above the celestial equator.

The festival of Vestalia was celebrated by the Romans during the longest day of the year. “Its rays hit the Northern Hemisphere at an oblique angle, creating the feeble winter sunlight”.

Because the sun is at its peak this time of year, Native American tribes would perform a sun dance around a ceremonial tree.

It’s the tilt of the Earth’s axis, rather than its distance from the sun, that creates the seasons, Timeanddate.com notes.

Skies may be cloudy, and the weather conditions not ideal, but a full moon will greet the Summer Solstice this year – something that only happens about once every 20 years.

Scientists say we may not see this occur again until 2062.

Because Earth doesn’t orbit upright.

“The summer solstice is the moment summer begins in the northern hemisphere”, said Sam Storch, a retired astronomy professor and member of the Astronomical Society of the Palm Beaches. As with anything science-related, there’s a fancy term for it – the Summer Solstice. This hasn’t happened in 70 years. That’s why you’ve probably noticed the sun being very high in the sky in our area recently.

Up here in the Northern Hemisphere, the solstice is really only the astronomical beginning of summer. It takes the land and atmosphere time to heat up so the warmest temperatures are typically not reflected until weeks later.