Winter Solstice 2021 Brings Longest Night, Ursid Meteors To VA

WASHINGTON, DC — The darkest day of the year is upon us, which means the winter solstice is just hours away in DC and Virginia. But, the glimmer of hope is that we start gaining minutes of sunlight daily from Tuesday onward.

The celestial holiday celebrated through the ages as the beginning of light arrives in Virginia and the District on Dec. 21 at 10:59 a.m. EST. If you’re not a fan of daylight, you’re in luck — we’ll see only nine hours and 26 minutes of sunlight on the first day of winter.

For anyone hoping to stretch their winter solstice revelry into the evening hours — or into the next day, perhaps — here’s a bonus: The Ursid meteor shower is likely to peak the morning of Dec. 22.

The annual Ursid meteor shower, which runs from Dec. 17-26 each year, is a minor meteor shower with only five to 10 shooting stars an hour. Still, a nearly moonless sky translates into excellent viewing conditions in the Washington, D.C., region depending on the weather.

The National Weather Service is forecasting mostly cloudy skies in our area Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, but clear skies and great views on Wednesday night.

Ursid meteors radiate most near the star Kochab in the Little Dipper, according to EarthSky.org. The star Polaris — or the North Star — is also part of the Little Dipper. If you can’t find the Little Dipper, use the Big Dipper. No matter what time of year you look, the two outer stars in the Big Dipper’s bowl always point to Polaris, marking the end of the Little Dipper’s handle.

The solstice isn’t something you see but rather something that occurs — though you may want to mark the 2021 solstice by taking a picture of your shadow at noon. Because the sun is at its lowest arc across the horizon, it casts long shadows. Shadows at noontime on the day of the winter solstice will be the longest of the year.

The winter solstice occurs at the exact moment the North Pole tilts the farthest away from the sun. On Sunday, the days begin growing a wee bit longer every day until the summer solstice, after which the days start getting shorter again.

The winter solstice, the oldest-known winter celebration, is derived from the Latin word “solstitium,” which means “sun standing still.” In ancient times, it was both spiritually and scientifically essential and marked the changing of the seasons. The best place in the world to observe the winter solstice is at the prehistoric monument Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, believed to have been erected by ancient Celtic druids to line up the exact position of the sunset on the winter solstice.

The winter solstice may explain why Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus in December. The Bible isn’t specific about when Jesus was born. Some people believe Dec. 25 may have been selected by Pope Julius I as the date of Christ’s birth to replace the ancient pagan Roman midwinter festival called “Saturnalia” with a Christian holiday.

The late Harry Yeide, who taught religion at George Washington University for nearly 50 years and died in 2013, once told National Geographic that as the Christmas celebration moved West, “the date that had been used to celebrate the winter solstice became sort of available for conversion to the observance of Christmas.”

For example, several rituals associated with Christmas — dinner feasts, gift-giving, and decorative wreaths — are rooted in pagan winter solstice rituals.

It may surprise you that the earliest sunsets and latest sunrises don’t occur on the winter solstice. It seems counterintuitive, but as Earthsky.org explains it, the key is understanding solar noon, the time of day the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. True solar noon occurs 10 minutes earlier on the clock in early December than it does at the solstice. When true noon occurs later on the solstice, so do the sunrise and sunset times.

“It’s this discrepancy between clock time and sun time that causes the Northern Hemisphere’s earliest sunset and the Southern Hemisphere’s earliest sunrise to precede the December solstice,” Earthsky.org says. “The discrepancy occurs primarily because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis.”