Winter Solstice!

The days start getting longer tomorrow!!

Yes, I'm sure you all realized that today is the winter solstice, the day in which the daylength in the northern hemisphere is at its shortest.  Tomorrow there will be a few more minutes of daylight.

This is definitely not one of the modern Christmas traditions, not even the 2000 year old Christian tradition.  Humans have watched the skies and their stars and planets for millennia.

These are the only two even faintly reasonable shots of the Milky Way I ever managed to get.  You have to expose the shutter for quite a few moments on a tripod, so a number of things can go wrong.  The apparently straight line in the photo below is a plane track.  The lighting conditions on these two nights, 8 years ago now, were obviously very different.

We know ancient people followed and understood the heavens, at least to some extent, because of sites like Stonehenge in England and Maeshowe and Brodgar in Scotland (the three sites we've seen).  Other sites around the world that exhibit solstice alignments include Karnak Temple in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, Jantar Mantar in India, Majorville Medicine Wheel in Alberta, Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and many others.

If that doesn't convince you that the winter solstice has always been important to human populations, perhaps just the fact that daylight tomorrow will be a few minutes longer (and spring that much closer) will make you pause and notice!