BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Here comes the summer (or winter) solstice!

The June solstice occurs at 10.51 UTC on Saturday June 21. For those of us in the northern hemisphere this is the start of summer. Hurrah! Those in the southern hemisphere have already enjoyed their summer and it's now going into winter.

You can read about what causes the summer solstice and some of the many celebrations that are related to it.

This is one of my favorite solstice photos. It's an atmospheric summer solstice sunrise at Stonehenge. A friend of mine took it and it appeared on the NASA website as an Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Beautiful photo! It would be amazing to be in Iceland or in the Arctic Circle tomorrow and see the sun moving around the horizon without setting.

Yes, it is strange seeing the Sun get lower without setting. (Assuming it isn't too cloudy to see the Sun at all!) But you don't have a longest day on the June solstice in the far north. For example, in Tromsø (northern Norway) the last sunrise was on May 18th and it won't set again until July 26th (and then for about 45 mins). So you can see this effect through the summer.

Last summer I was in Norway and once we got far enough north, the Sun didn't set for four days. Moving back south, on the fifth day we had two sunsets. This picture of "the Midnight Sun" was taken several days before the solstice. And it was actually the One-O'Clock-in-the-Morning Sun.

What a great photo! And what an interesting phenomenon. I would love to see that (continuous daylight in the far north), though I imagine it would be hard to live there and put up with that. And what about the reverse? Continuous darkness come wintertime? That would be kind of depressing!

Karm, I'm sure you're right about the continuous darkness in the winter. Winter vacations to sunnier places seem to be popular in Norway. I've been to Norway in February and there wasn't much sunlight, but it wasn't dark all the time. Sunrises and sunsets are lengthy and there are dusky times too. In fact, sunrises and sunsets in the Arctic are some of the most spectacular I have ever seen.

I would love to see such a sunset (or sunrise). Farthest north I've been is US/Canadian border. I'd love to see the Northern Lights as well!

June 24th is St John's Day and in many places the summer solstice celebrations were incorporated into these celebrations. St John (San Giovanni) is the patron saint of Florence, Italy and his day is a public holiday and a day of celebrations. The day finishes with fireworks ("I Fochi di San Giovanni").