OPINION: Solstice musings

I wouldn’t describe myself as a clock watcher, I don’t always need to know the time. But there are times (pardon the pun) when I become interested in the big hand, the little hand and the second hand, so to speak. This Sunday, for example, is one of those occasions. Sunday, June 21, is the shortest day of the year. It records the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere. Just for the record, it is also the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere — their summer solstice. The detail of the winter solstice is that we, as good citizens of the Mid West, will get 10 hours and 20 minutes of daylight. Sunrise is at 7.11am and sunset at 5.31pm. The time of the actual solstice, when the sun is at its greatest distance from the equator is 5.43am. I wouldn’t recommend getting out of bed for it though, there will be nothing to see. The word solstice quite literally means sun-stopping. And although the June, or winter, solstice is the first day of the astronomical winter, its more regularly thought of as being midwinter. Of course there has always been a winter or summer solstice and there is sufficient evidence to suggest that humans have been observing these days for nearly 12,000 years. We may have observed the winter solstice in the last part of the Stone Age. Monuments from that era, like Maeshowe in Scotland, were apparently built to capture sunrise on the winter solstice. It has been suggested that these structures had religious significance and that Stone Age people gathered at them to see the sun trapped on the year’s shortest day. If you are thinking of doing a little travelling post COVID-19 to celebrate the winter solstice Maeshowe is on the Orkney Islands north-east of Scotland. The well-known Stonehenge in England is another site of worship for winter solstice. Temperatures when you visit will be close to zero ... bring your sun with you.