Overview
- Astonomers place the solstice at 10:03 a.m. Eastern (9:03 a.m. Central) on Sunday, Dec. 21, a single moment rather than a full day.
- The event occurs when the Sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, defining the start of astronomical winter and producing the fewest hours of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Local daylight snapshots include about 7 hours 49 minutes 42 seconds in London on the solstice and just under 9 hours 11 minutes in Chicago.
- The earliest sunset does not fall on the solstice for many locales, with examples including roughly Dec. 8 in Boston, Dec. 12 in Plymouth and Dec. 16 in Lerwick.
- Days begin to lengthen after Dec. 21 by seconds at first, with latest sunrises arriving in early January and Chicago’s sunset reaching about 4:31 p.m. by Dec. 31.