The Longest Night of the Year

Today, is the winter solstice .. which makes tonight, the longest night of the year... and also marks the beginning of the winter season.

The winter solstice occurs at the instant when the Sun's position in the sky is at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from the observers' hemisphere. This year, solstice occurs at 12/21/08 at 12:04 UTC (7:04 PM EST) -- which means, winter officially begins this evening :-D

The seasonal significance of the winter solstice is in the reversal of the gradually lengthening nights and shortening days ... or in our case up here in the North, it's when we start going back towards the light, as the solstice marks our halfway point in our dark season.




I'm way up in that dark area in the Arctic Circle



(this concludes our little educational moment).