Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Thursday, December 22nd.  The sun will rise at 8:16.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 48 minutes, setting at 5:05.   The moon, 2 days before new, will rise at 7:06 tomorrow morning.

At 12:30 this morning the sun reached its farthest southerly travel and is now slowly beginning to turn northward again.  That point was the winter solstice, or to be more general the December solstice, because in the southern hemisphere of the earth summer has arrived, while we star winter.  December 21st is the usual day of the solstice, and it will be again next year because next year is the leap year and will set the calendar back to match the seasons.  The adding of the extra day every 4 years came under the auspices of Julius Caesar and gave us the Julian calendar.  It slightly over corrected the calendar.  The latest adjustment was the Gregorian reform that will fix the calendar for the next few millennia.

* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.