Happy Winter Solstice from Stonehenge: The Longest Night Is Over!
This morning at dawn, around 15,000 people gathered at Stonehenge, the world's most famous Neolithic monument, to mark the arrival of astronomical winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
You can watch this year's Stonehenge Winter Solstice celebration from the comfort of your own home by tuning in to the live stream, which began at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, 21 December.
At Stonehenge, the winter solstice marks a turning point - a moment of reflection as the sun begins its return. This 5,000-year-old stone monument in Wiltshire, England, UK, sees an annual alignment on the solstice. On 21 December this year, the sun could be seen rising in the northeast, directly over the Heel Stone. The event was broadcast live on YouTube by English Heritage, and the global solstice moment arrived shortly after at 9:21 am GMT (4:21 am EDT).
This year's event coincided with new research suggesting that Stonehenge may have been built as a unification monument in prehistoric times. The new theory suggests that the monument's stones, sourced from remote regions, served as symbols of political alliances, possibly after unrest.
According to an article published in Archaeology International, Stonehenge is not a temple, calendar or observatory, as many archaeologists have theorised.
‘I think we've just been looking at Stonehenge the wrong way,’ Mike Parker Pearson of University College London, author of the article, told The Guardian.
‘You really have to look at the whole thing to understand what they are doing. They are building a monument that expresses the permanence of certain aspects of their world.’ The solstice alignment may have a less important purpose.
What does the solstice mean?
The moment of the solstice occurs when the sun reaches its southernmost point directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. At this point, the sun appears to ‘freeze’ before changing direction, which is reflected in the Latin roots of the word ‘solstice’ - sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).
What happens on the solstice?
The sun rises at the farthest north-eastern position on the horizon of the year on the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.
Why is the winter solstice on 21 December?
The December solstice occurs because the Earth's axis is tilted by about 23.5 degrees relative to its orbit around the Sun. On 21 December, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted furthest away from the sun, resulting in shorter daylight hours and lower temperatures. The sun appears lower in the sky and takes a shorter path across it.
