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The days are getting brighter, the sunshine hours more and yet the day comes when it gets darker again. Decisive for this is the time of the summer solstice.
Before it comes to the summer solstice, a so-called equinox was reached on Saturday, March 20, 2021, also called equinox. So on that day, it was dark for about as long as it was light.
The longest day of the year awaits us today – Monday, June 21, 2021. With the summer solstice taking place then, the day lasts almost 17 hours before it goes into the night for only about seven hours. The sun then reaches its highest point in the northern hemisphere during the course of the year and provides us with plenty of daylight before disappearing again on the horizon.
The summer solstice marks the beginning of summer according to astronomical definition. According to the meteorological definition, summer begins a few weeks before.
Conversely, this also means that it will get darker a little earlier every day from June 21 until the winter solstice finally arrives on Tuesday, December 21, 2021. On this day we will experience the shortest day or the longest night of the year – depending on your point of view.
Winter and summer solstice are celebrated
Both the winter and summer solstices have been celebrated for thousands of years in a variety of cultures. In Europe, the mysterious stone circles of Stonehenge in southern Great Britain serve as a pilgrimage site.
Both in summer and winter, thousands of visitors travel to greet the shortest or longest day of the year. In addition to partygoers and tourists, followers of pagan cults are also among them. They dance, sing and drum to small spiritual ceremonies.
The summer and winter solstice is one of the rare occasions when visitors are allowed up to the stone colossi. Otherwise, they have to marvel at the Neolithic site behind barriers. It is not clear what the stones, which weigh up to 25 tons and are thousands of years old, were originally intended for. Stonehenge could have served as a healing site or observatory.
— source: tonight.de/picture: pixabay.com
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