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Ephemeris: 06/20/2025 – Summer begins tonight!

June 20, 2025 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Friday, June 20th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 34 minutes, setting at 9:31, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:57. The Moon, 2 days past last quarter, will rise at 2:38 tomorrow morning.

Summer will officially arrive for us on Earth’s Northern Hemisphere at 10:42 pm, tonight. If you are south of the equator, winter will arrive. If you are listening to this on the Internet from two time zones east of the Eastern United States it’s 2:42 UT, June 21st. And to be season agnostic, it’s the June solstice. From tonight to the December solstice, the first day of winter for us northern hemispherians, (I think that’s a word) the daylight hours will get shorter as the Sun heads south. Solstice means “Sun standstill” as it stops its northerly motion and will, after tonight, head back south again. The Northern Hemisphere will still be heating up for another month, before we begin to cool down.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

Solstices
Comparing the sun’s path at the summer and winter solstices. This is a stereographic representation of the whole sky which distorts the sky and magnifies the size of the sun’s path near the horizon. This is a stereographic projection, which compresses the image near the zenith. Created using my LookingUp app.
Earth and local area near summer solstice from NOAA's DSCOVR satellite orbiting the Sun-Earth L1 point.
Earth and magnified local area near summer solstice. Image taken near local noon June 17, 2020. Credit: NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite orbiting the Sun-Earth L1 point 994,970 miles (1,601,432 kilometers) sunward from the Earth.
Categories: Astronomical Event, Ephemeris Program, Seasons Tags: