The Incas of South America celebrated the corresponding winter solstice with a ceremony called Inti Raymi, which included food offerings and sacrifices of animals, and maybe even people.Īrchaeologists have also discovered the remains of an astronomical observatory in a long-buried Maya city in Guatemala, in which the buildings were designed to align with the sun during the solstices. Egyptians built the Great Pyramids so that the sun, when viewed from the Sphinx, sets precisely between two of the pyramids on the summer solstice. The summer solstice-also called midsummer-has long been recognized and often celebrated by many cultures. "During the Northern Hemisphere summer, we're actually farthest from the sun," Hammergren said. In reality, the tilt of Earth has more influence on the seasons than does our planet's distance to the sun. It's the same with the Earth." The Earth isn't any closer to the sunĪnother popular misconception is that during the summer-and especially during the summer solstice-Earth is closer to the sun than at other times of the year, says Mark Hammergren, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. "And after you turn it off, it takes a while for it to cool down. "If you think about turning up an oven, it takes it a long time to heat up," said Robert Howell, an astronomer at the University of Wyoming. As a result, the hottest days usually occur in July or August. On the summer solstice, the Northern Hemisphere receives more sunlight than on any other day of the year-but that doesn't mean the first day of summer is also the hottest.Įarth's oceans and atmosphere act like heat sinks, absorbing and reradiating the sun's rays over time.Įven though the planet absorbs a lot of sunlight on the summer solstice, it takes several weeks to release it.
Read on for some more intriguing facts about the summer solstice.
(The opposite holds true for the Southern Hemisphere, where June brings the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year.)
This means that on the June solstice, the Northern Hemisphere will have the longest day and shortest night of the year. On the June solstice, the North Pole is tipped more toward the sun than on any other day of the year. Take a breathtaking journey to Earth's closest star, the sun.
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