Pictures show summer solstice 2024 at Stonehenge

The summer solstice on Thursday indicators the tip of spring within the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of a brand-new season, one which guarantees extra heat and extra daylight. To mark the transition into summer 2024, the astronomical occasion serves as a type of grand opening: all over the place above the equator, it will likely be the longest day of the yr.

At Stonehenge, an prehistoric monument of huge stones that’s now a protected heritage web site in southern England, historians imagine historic folks constructed a ceremonial round construction from monumental sarsen stones with a particular intention to honor and have a good time the solstice. 

Mysteriously erected round 2,500 B.C.E., Stonehenge is considered a non secular or ritual floor of some kind, though the true explanation why folks conceived of the thought to construct it, and what they might have used it for, are nonetheless unknown. The stones had been raised and meticulously organized within the late Neolithic, or Stone Age, interval —a time when creating such a monument would have been a superb feat of superior development and engineering. 

To an individual standing within the middle of Stonehenge, the structure is oriented in order that the stones body, with precision, the dawn on the summer solstice and the sundown on the winter solstice. Thousands of individuals flock to the positioning every year on each solstices to witness the phenomenon for themselves.

Just a day earlier than this yr’s summer solstice, local weather protesters sprayed Stonehenge with orange paint to make an announcement towards fossil fuels. The group that manages the Stonehenge web site, English Heritage, instructed CBS News the incident was “extremely upsetting and our curators are investigating the extent of the damage,” however that the monument remained open to the general public.

What is the summer solstice?

The solstice is technically the kickoff to summer within the Northern Hemisphere, with its inverse, the winter solstice, concurrently ushering in winter throughout the Southern Hemisphere. 

It happens when Earth, which is tilted 23.5 degrees on its axis, reaches the utmost level at which the planet’s northern half is oriented in direction of the solar for the reason that summer solstice final got here round. Because Earth is continually rotating on its axis and concurrently orbiting the solar, this tilt presents every hemisphere the prospect to wash in its longest extent of daylight just one per yr.

Seasons exist on Earth due to the 23.5-degree tilt. As the planet is spinning and touring its orbital path over roughly 365 days, Earth’s slanted axis means the angles at which totally different components of its floor face the solar shift all year long. During the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice, which often falls on both June 20 or June 21 — it is June 20 this yr — these cosmic mechanics nudge the highest of the planet ahead the solar. At the North Pole, six months of daylight start, whereas at the South Pole, it means six months of darkness as a substitute.

Conditions reverse six months later, when Earth arrives at some extent in its orbit the place the axis suggestions it again in order that the South Pole is nearest the solar. On that day, sometimes Dec. 21 or 22, the winter solstice within the Northern Hemisphere brings the shortest stretch of daylight, whereas the Southern Hemisphere begins its summer. 

Crowds gathered at Stonehenge in December to mark the winter solstice as effectively.

Why is June 20 the longest day of 2024?

The North Pole is rarely as skewed towards the solar as it’s in the course of the summer solstice. That pronounced tilt exposes a bigger part of the Northern Hemisphere to daylight at one time than it does at every other level in Earth’s revolution. From the attitude of an individual on the bottom, that publicity creates the longest interval of daylight in 24 hours to happen all yr.  

This yr, the North Pole reaches its most excessive tilt at 4:51 p.m. EDT on June 20, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The solar is then straight over the Tropic of Cancer, a longitudinal line at wraps horizontally across the circumference of the Earth at 23.5 levels above the equator. The line runs by way of Mexico, the Bahamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India and southern China.

On the opposite finish of the cycle, when the North Pole is tilted so far as potential away from the solar, the part of the Northern Hemisphere that daylight can attain is as small as it may be. That’s why the winter solstice is the shortest day of the yr for folks above the equator, and the longest day of the yr for folks beneath.

How summer solstice has been celebrated all through historical past

The summer solstice is an event that civilizations have noticed and celebrated for millennia. Historians imagine the Neolithic individuals who constructed Stonehenge had been a part of a broader historic tradition in northern and central Europe that, consultants say, did appear to acknowledge the solstice and altering seasons as they associated to agriculture and, probably, the timing of crop cycles. 

The British nonprofit National Trust writes in an outline of ancient solstice traditions that the occasion “was typically marked by Celtic, Slavic and Germanic people by lighting bonfires, intended to boost the sun’s strength for the remainder of the crop season and ensure a healthy harvest.” Other Neolithic stone circles considerably like Stonehenge additionally seem to have been constructed with the solstices in thoughts, based on the group.

These days, folks mark the solstice with their very own tackle the standard ceremonies of historic occasions. Festivals and bonfires are frequent in communities all over the world. But there are myriad methods through which modern-day folks acknowledge Earth’s seasonal transit. Depending on the place it takes place, a celebration of the summer solstice can appear to be a baseball game at midnight in Fairbanks, Alaska, or an all-day mass yoga gathering in Times Square.