Cosmic!

So we're not done with the shortest day yet? Gah.

Not looking forward to the very short day in 2012

Keep this from my wife.

I informed her this morning that today was the winter solstice.

She seemed very impressed that I knew this.

Crushing my innate man-wisdom will not further anyone's causes.

I am now hoping that I can avoid the subject this evening...

so the elliptical orbit explains why the very darkest evenings are now behind us (yes, it is panto season) whilst the darkest mornings are not until next year (well, very early january)

Well I'm celebrating it today!

I blame Nick Clegg.

The solstice is a moment, not a day, and not the "shortest day of the year" as your caption writer puts.

Sunrise and sunset are determined by the equation of time, which is something else again.

We're not done with the shortest day yet because the sun always sits still for three days after the solstice. I mean the days stay the same lenght until Sunday. so you have to wait until Monday before they start to get longer. Thats the same every year.

Much better to celebrate Solstice than New Year.

Solstice is when the days get longer and brighter again.

New Year is just an arbitrary date.

This is kid's stuff. It shouldn't need spelling out in a broadsheet newspaper.

I mean the days stay the same lenght until Sunday. so you have to wait until Monday before they start to get longer. Thats the same every year.

It's the same every week! Mondays always seem longer than Sundays.

"The winter solstice is as far south as the sun ever gets"

The sun is migrating?

This is kid's stuff. It shouldn't need spelling out in a broadsheet newspaper.

oi fungloo, yr kids are over-educated... let them kick back for a year to give those of us in remedial time to catch up...

The winter solstice is not the start of winter. It's officially if not in reality mid winter, and has always been celebrated as such in the northern hemisphere.

The start of winter is the first of November. Which the old festival which we now know as Halloween the night before is all about.

"official" start of winter ???

¿according to whom?

So, each day gets longer after winter solstice by how much? (per day that is? )

dang! It's my birthday tomorrow. Shortest bleeding day.
But longest night. Time to party.

Yeah, the sun's actually a bird. It goes south for winter.

So "christmas" is on Thursday! I thought it was today... feasting twice over, so!

and probably explains why the powers that be (all those years ago) chose 25th December to be Christmas Day instead of, say, the 21st.

This is kid's stuff. It shouldn't need spelling out in a broadsheet newspaper.

..not sure about that. Myself and allot of my friends thought today was solstice, so this article has educated me.
But then again, I've always been a big kid.

Are you bemoaning the spellers or the idiots who need it spelled out? I'm in the latter camp.

@whitworthflange
21 December 2011 05:11PM
The winter solstice is not the start of winter. It's officially if not in reality mid winter, and has always been celebrated as such in the northern hemisphere.

The start of winter is the first of November. Which the old festival which we now know as Halloween the night before is all about.

-

Today IS the start of the Meteorological winter. The seasons are thus.

21st December = Winter
21st March = Spring
21st June = Summer
21st September = Autumn

If you want to be pedantic, today is the last day of the old year. Which runs 22nd June to 21st December. And the new year starts tomorrow, 22nd December to 21st June. One is the dark year, with the dark increasing, and the other the light, with the light increasing. This was commonly used by the Celts / Britons before the Roman calendar came into affect.

* - the Earth takes 365.25 days to orbit the sun

365.2<u>4</u>, surely?

Likewise...

Happy Birthday to us, Happy Birthday to us... :-)

Little known fact: The winter solstice is in the middle of the halcyon days.

By about 90 seconds. But I think we've three days of the same amount of daylight. So, from Monday, you should see 90 seconds more light each evening. I usually start to notice it about mid-Jan.

This a great site for that info

http://www.timeanddate.com/

Days start off by getting just 6 seconds more daylight than the previous day just after the Winter solstice but by March it goes up to a whopping 5 extra minutes per day before dipping off again heading towards the Summer solstice.

It's all to do with those bloody sine waves that scientists are happy with.
To start with, the days only get a little longer each day.
Then they suddenly seem to get much longer day on day.
Then towards summer solstice they start to slow down, and only get a little longer each day.

I have a line of poetry forming in my mind....

Autumn. Slipping down a sine wave from summer into winter...?

"Footnote Becomes Full Story Shocker!"

Gerry Hattrick, Daily Cobblers

The Guardian today reported that the winter solstice varies between the 21st and 22nd of December and managed to make a complete article out it! Ian Sample, aged 19, reported that "blah blah blah" which caused shock across the entire nation, nay, the world. This caused the rotation of the earth to speed up due to the increase in levels of energy and the shortest day was left being the 20th of December.
Ian, whose favourite music is some bland R&B clone stuff, was left in dismay when this was discovered. "Blimey," he said as he ruffled his golden locks. "I weren't expecting that, like!"
Nex year, the winter solstice will...oh, forget it...

(Sorry, Ian, nothing personal. I don't know you at all and I bet you're highly desirable and dead clever. I'm just having a laugh.)

If you think I'm going to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning to sacrifice 11 virgins you must be joking. I'll leave it to next year. It also means I can start to recycle all that Virgin junk mail again.

This is when you not only get into Leap Years, but also Leap Seconds.

There has been an international conference on this as computers and the like need to know exactly how long a year is. Otherwise (?) your sat-nav fails.

The winter solstice happens because the Earth does not spin upright, but on an axis 23.5 degrees from vertical.

hmmm..... "Vertical"? There is no such definition in the solar system. That would assume the Earth's orbital plane is "horizontal", but there is really no reason to call it that except that it usually gets drawn that way in diagrams.

The winter solstice happens because the Earth does not spin upright, but on an axis 23.5 degrees from vertical

What is "vertical" in space? I assume you mean 23.5 degrees from the orthogonal to the plane of orbit of the earth around the sun.

@BrianLewis

"What is "vertical" in space?"

"Up" or "North". I thought that obvious, and you should go back to Sunday school for a better grasp of the world.

yes

Nice to see the Christmas spirit in such evidence. Spread that good-will.

Today IS the start of the Meteorological winter. The seasons are thus.

21st December = Winter

Please desist from talking about things that you know nothing of. The so-called seasons that you state are those as defined by astronomers, but the standard meteorological seasons are simply December - February, March - May, etc.

It's also worth noting that for various purposes meteorologists define different seasons for different purposes. So, for example, when looking at the effect of La-Nina on British climate it can be useful to consider a late-winter season [Feb - Mar] separately from an early winter season [Dec - Jan]. Or, you can look at long winter/summer seasons [Nov - Mar and May - Sep], with one month long spring and autumn.

The noted British climatologist Hubert Lamb actually created five seasons for the British climate, which included an early winter from about 20 Nov - 20 Jan, and a late winter thereafter.

So, today, or tomorrow, may mark the start of many things, but it most certainly does not mark the start of any meteorological season.

Here is some more information on the definitions of the seasons. THere also appears to be an interesting paper by Alpert (2004) that I intend to read...

It's all very well to compare relative dates for the seasons - but until three weeks ago there were geraniums, lobelia, sweet peas and nasturtiums all in flower in pots in the yard, and roses in bud - with attendant greenfly - in the garden. Daffodils are well up and almost all the other spring bulbs are showing ready to flower...

Dates seem rather arbitrary - nobody's told nature.

Bugger!

Dec 22 is my birthday. Now I have to go to Stonehenge instead!

@ThermoStat

"Today IS the start of the Meteorological winter. The seasons are thus.

21st December = Winter

Please desist from talking about things that you know nothing of. "

Nice one. But it just makes you look like an ass. I meant astronomically, but I didn't tell you that you didn't know what you were talking about.

"Time period of winter
Astronomically, it starts with the winter solstice (around December 21 in the Northern Hemisphere and June 21 in the Southern Hemisphere), and ends with the spring equinox (around March 21 in the Northern Hemisphere and September 21 in the Southern Hemisphere). In meteorology, it is by convention counted instead as the whole months of June, July and August in the Southern Hemisphere and December, January and February in the Northern Hemisphere.

The sun appears to stand still for three days at the solstice, afterwhich it begins its return journey into light and warmth. Hmm, three days after solstice, a celebration of the newborn sun ;-)

It might actually be simple harmonic motion, but I stand to be corrected.

Not to be confused with a simple harmonic moron, e.g. a Liberal going along with Tories.

I’m having a winter solstice party in Glastonbury tomorrow night. Drumming and chanting round the campfire whilst naked. The odd rams skull on a stick being thrust wildly through the flames. Brian I would be honoured if you could come along and spice things up a bit.

Ah, but in California the solstice is at 21:30 on 21 Sept. For us the solstice is today.

Cool it !
If you read the link that "Thermostat "kindly provided you will see it is, as always, a bit more complicated than appears at first sight .

Wolcum Yule.

and probably explains why the powers that be (all those years ago) chose 25th December to be Christmas Day instead of, say, the 21st.

Actually it's simpler (and more complicated) than that (well, according to Wikipedia.) Essentially, when they came to decide the date for Christmas at the Council of Nicea, they thought December 25 was the solstice:

In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar in his Julian calendar established December 25 as the date of the winter solstice of Europe (Latin: Bruma). Since then, the difference between the calendar year (365.2500 days) and the tropical year (~365.2421897 days) moved the day associated with the actual astronomical solstice forward approximately three days every four centuries, arriving to December 12 during the 16th century. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decided to restore the exact correspondence between seasons and civil year but, doing so, he did not make reference to the age of the Roman dictator, but to the Council of Nicea of 325, as the period of definition of major Christian feasts. So, the Pope annulled the 10-day error accumulated between the 16th and the 4th century, but not the 3-day one between the 4th AD and the 1st BC century.