Night sky, 12:30AM, June 21
The summer solstice was early this morning, at 4:28AM, to be precise. This is what the sky looked like right before I went to bed last night. It was a little less than an hour after sunset and 4 hours before sunrise. So the sky would have been a little darker at, say, 2AM, but there’s no way I was staying up to photograph that for you. And I was pointing right at the place in the sky where the sun was below the horizon, so directly behind me the sky would have been darker.
You’ll see from the chart below (a screen shot from Weather Underground) that it never really got dark, because while we still have sunrise and sunset, there’s nothing at all in the boxes for the start and finish in the twilight categories.
We all, you know, had our summer solstice moment at exactly the same time—all of us in the northern hemisphere, that is. But what is 4:28 AM for me would be 7:28 AM for those of you on EDT. Don’t ask me what it was for people in Newfoundland; I only work in full hours. And of course, for some, that moment might fall on a whole other day, datewise. I haven’t figured that out for sure yet, either. [Update: I think I’ve figured it out using this map. I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that we all had the solstice on the same date this year, but I don’t think it always works that way.* You are allowed to correct me on that.]
[*Update 2: Yes, most years the solstice occurs on two different dates. In 2000, for instance, the solstice was at 1:48AM June 21 UTC, which means it would have been June 20 anywhere in North America.]
Update 3: Here’s a picture of the sunset—at 11:30ish—on the 22nd.
