Shortest Day , Winter Solstice !

The winter solstice is upon us: Thursday, December 21, will be the shortest day of 2017 for anyone living north of the equator. If pagan rituals are your thing, today's the day.
As usual I have painted myself blue and run around the garden naked , sacrificing a can of Fosters to the beer gods
The days are getting longer from tomorrow , seed ordering time soon

 

Sunrise/Sunset

• Sunrise: 7:43 AM
• Sunset: 5:19 PM
• Duration: 9:36 hr
  

 

I think the actual timing of the Winter Solstice is shortly after official sunset times, when the Sun falls to 6 degrees below the horizon this afternoon and the last remaining light disappears from the sky.

Sunrise will now have reached it's most southerly point on the horizon, and most northerly point at sunset and start appearing/disappearing further north/south until the Summer Solstice when it moves the other way(s) again, as anybody who's out and about for sunrise & sunset all year round will be aware of.

There's still time to get to Stonehenge for the Solstice (free admittance today) and although there's normally free parking beside 'The Drove' (google The Netheravon Cattle Drove) there was talk earlier this year tthat Wiltshire C.C may stop this long established practice.

 

@Victoria are those times for Portugal or the UK please?

When I was awake at silly o’clock this morning I was trying to find a list on the net that gives all the sunrise/sunset times but couldn’t find it this time as I believe but not 100% sure that we don’t start to get a change for a couple of weeks after today

I was watching a programme on the telly the other day and this particular place,not sure if it was Alaska has twenty four hours of sunlight in the summer months and so the migrating Caribou keep running all day and night as there isn’t any darkness and the residents of different towns grow monster vegetables because of the long daylight hours.I wouldn’t mind some of that

 

@Kandy Times vary depending on how far north of the equator someone is, but also on how it is measured. There are several different ways. I'm sure someone that knows more about this than I do will be along soon to explain more.

Times for us today are:
Sunrise: 08:35 CET (07:35GMT).
Sunset: 15:35 CET (14:35GMT).

 

Times for my location are
Sunrise 08:22
Sunset 15:51

@Kandy , this weather site gives you sunrise and set for your location. Its at the bottom of each days forecast.
City weather: The weather for Coventry, United Kingdom.

 

@Kandy Portugal is on the same time as the UK ... the only country in Europe that is. We are further south than you. Although part of Spain is across the top of Portugal, it should be on our time but to keep in line with the rest of Spain the are one hour ahead.

 

We're 7:40 sunrise, 4:45 sunset. For most that means going to work and coming home in the dark. So glad we're now going to be spinning to longer days

 

Sunrise and Sunset Calculator

 

Many thanks for the info @Victoria about Portugal and interesting to find out the info

@Sandy Ground I did some Googling this morning and I found different graphs and drawings but as I am blonde couldn't take all the info in to my brain to work it out

@HarryS thanks for the link and will have a proper look later as a pop up came up so Mr Kandy might have to sort it out for me.

I had another look round the net and have found this chart and this is similar to what I looked at the other year and this is what I was trying to find at silly o'clock.

This one is actuallyfor the town nearest to the village where I live

PS Forgot to add theta it was really dark in the house this morning,more so than it normally does and we had to have the house lights on for longer this morning and that was with the curtains open

 

Thanks @Scrungee that is the one I have just managed to find on the net but Thanks for taking the trouble for finding it for me

 

I use that site alll the time, including their phases of the moon section to find out dates of neap and spring tides and when high tide times coincide with daybreak for planning sea fishing trips, then following online weather reports in the run up to a likely date and only bothering to head off if everything's been OK.

There was supposed to be a small chance of some sunlight around dawn this morning, but it was too cloudy, and the forecast for a possible sunset has now changed to heavy cloud, so nothing to see here. But there is still a chance there will be a break in the clouds at Amesbury this afternoon at just the right time and I hope all those who've made the effort to go will get to see something other than heavy cloud.

 

Forgot to say @Scrungee but on Burrowhayes Facebook page there was a photo of one of the static caravans going off down the road to its new home so looks like Julian is replacing at least one of them with a new one.

We will be going back sometime next year as we have the cheap train tickets to use that we were able to buy on the Flying Scotsman day trip so looking forward to that and though we have had to cancel Christmas at Chatsworth this year we have already booked for next year

Sorry to go off topic but have to write things down when I remember them

 

Not a sign of any sunset this afternoon to mark the Solstice.

Looks like one from alongside the river, towards the far end (where the river depth gauge and automatic flood height alarm are the other side of beech hedge). One Easter we had one at the far end towards the right corner and everytime we flushed the loo it would make an incredibly load humming noise. Our daughter was of the age where she found this incredibly amusing, forbade us to report it as a fault and ran to flush everytime somebody walked past. And the following Easter we ended up in the same caravan and blow me it was still making that noise! We knicknamed that loo 'the hummer', thought it was going to be that one.

I'll see if she recognises any of those ponies in the pic that looks like it was taken at Webbers Post car park (was there only 2 months ago).