Let's celebrate: Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year

Yahoo

11 hours ago

Editor's note: This story was first published on June 21, 2013
Welcome to the best day of the year.
Today is the summer solstice, the longest day. In North Jersey, we'll get more than 15 hours of daylight. Go ahead and gloat — that's nearly an hour and a half more daylight than Key West, Florida, will get today. For those who like daylight — pretty much everyone save Dracula — today is a day to celebrate.
In past eras, they actually did.
"The summer solstice was a carnivalesque feast day," said Pamela H. Smith, a European history expert at Columbia University. "In England, there were bonfires, lots of beer drinking, cannons being fired off, masqueraders — people dressed up as devils and demons.
"Days like the solstice were important for ancient peoples in terms of trying to find patterns in nature that were important for their livelihood, like knowing when to plant crops. All cultures had megaliths like Stonehenge," Smith said.
The Earth's orbit around the sun is slightly elliptical, but not enough to cause the seasons, said Carlton Pryor, an astronomer at Rutgers University. In fact, at the summer solstice, the North Jersey region is 94.4 million miles from the sun. At the winter solstice, it's only 91.4 million miles away.
The seasons are caused by the Earth's axis being tilted at a 23.5 degree angle. When the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, the hemisphere receives sunlight more directly, for longer periods, increasing temperatures.
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In winter, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away — even though it is closer to the sun in miles — so the light is less direct, more angled. The sun is lower in the sky and appears for fewer hours, causing cooler temperatures.
On the summer solstice, the Earth's northern axis is tilted at its most extreme angle toward the sun. Today in North Jersey, the sun at its zenith will be at an angle of nearly 73 degrees above the horizon. On Dec. 21, it will be only 26 degrees above the horizon.
The Earth's axis tilt also affects where the sun rises on the horizon. Conventional wisdom that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west is true only twice a year — at the spring and fall equinoxes.
During the summer solstice, the sun rises at its northernmost point on the horizon. This morning in Hackensack, if you had faced due east, the sun would have risen about 32 degrees to the north (or to your left). At the winter solstice, it will rise 32 degrees to the south of due east (or to your right).
Though the summer solstice once triggered celebrations, that's rarely the case anymore. After the Protestant Reformation in Europe, religious leaders started to call for an end to the celebrations. "A lot of Protestant pastors criticized midsummer night's eve, saying people were drinking too much, fighting," Smith said.
Another reason we don't celebrate the solstice is the shift from an agrarian lifestyle.
"We live in a more urban society, and we have colonized the night," said Sara Schechner, an expert on science history at Harvard University. "So we are not as bound to the cycles of nature in how we go about our lives."
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Summer solstice 2025 is here