The solstice officially occurred at 5:02 a.m. eastern time this morning. At that time, the northern hemisphere of the earth had its maximal tilt away from the sun (see the image below).
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| (Encyclopaedia Britannica) |
Conversely, the southern hemisphere had its maximal tilt towards the sun today, and the Tropic of Capricorn, located at a latitude of about 23.4 ° S, received direct sunlight.
All locations in the northern hemisphere had their least amount of daylight for the year today. Hartford, CT had 9 hours 8 minutes of daylight, while Burlington, VT had 8 hours 49 minutes. After 5:02 this morning, the northern hemisphere began tilting back towards the sun. That means that each day after today until the summer solstice, we will see more daylight!
Completely unrelated to the winter solstice, today is the day when Jupiter and Saturn will appear closest to each other, in what is being dubbed the 'Great Conjunction' of the planets. Over the past few weeks, Jupiter and Saturn have gradually appeared closer to each other each night, and that culminates tonight. I am not an astronomer, so for more on this neat phenomenon, I'll deflect to NASA.
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