21-06-2008 Summer Solstice (Article 142)

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Simon Kenny
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Location: Shannon, Co. Clare, Ireland

21-06-2008 Summer Solstice (Article 142)

Post by Simon Kenny » Wed Dec 31, 2008 10:35 am

Summer Solstice (Article 142)

The summer solstice usually falls on the 21st of June, but on some years it can occur on the 20th as it does this year. This day is often referred to as the longest day of the year, this is slightly misleading as the day is of course still 24 hours, what is different is that this day has the longest possible amount of sunshine as that the sun is above the horizon the longest possible time as seen from Ireland. Also, this leads to the shortest night of the year.
On the day of the solstice, the Sun peaks above the eastern horizon at 5.15am and sets at 21.57, that is potentially 16hours 43 minutes of clear sunshine, never mind the bright twilight before and after it. This time of the year, the night time sky doesn’t become truly dark as a bright yellow sunset will be visible all along the northern horizon during the night. If you were able to head about 17 degrees further north to a location in northern Scandinavia, you would see that the Sun would get close to the horizon in the north but never actually go below it, it would be daytime during our night time hours, giving rise to the name “land of the midnight Sun”, may people travel there to see this phenomena.
On the day of the solstice, the Sun reaches a maximum altitude of 61 degrees above the southern horizon, (the sky directly above you been 90 degrees and the horizon been 0 degrees). If you are travelling to somewhere further south like the Canaries, the Sun reaches an altitude of nearly 85 degrees, almost overhead which is one of the reasons why it gets so hot there in the Summer. If you could travel 4.5 degrees further south, the midday sun would be directly overhead, this location is called the tropic of Cancer and is marked out as a line of latitude 23.5 degrees above the equator. During the winter Solstice the sun lies above the tropic of Capricorn at 23.5 degrees south of the equator.
This day did not go unnoticed in ancient times, the Celts celebrated with dancing & bonfires to help increase the Sun's energy. The Chinese marked the day by honouring Li, the Chinese Goddess of Light. The Druids' celebrated the day as the "wedding of Heaven and Earth", resulting in the present day belief of a "lucky" wedding in June. Pagans called the Midsummer moon the "Honey Moon" for the mead made from fermented honey that was part of wedding ceremonies performed at the Summer Solstice. There, pagans often wore protective garlands of herbs and flowers. One of the most powerful of them was a plant called 'chase-devil', which is known today as Saint Johns Wort and is still used by modern herbalists as a mood stabilizer. The remains of structures built for monitoring the summer solstice are still with us today, Newgrange and Stonehenge been well known examples

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