{"id":18479,"date":"2023-12-22T03:45:47","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T22:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=18479"},"modified":"2025-04-05T11:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T05:41:08","slug":"winter-solstice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/winter-solstice\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Winter Solstice?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Winter Solstice<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The winter solstice marks the\u00a0shortest day of the year.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0Earth is tilted 23.4 degrees on its axis, so\u00a0if the Earth&#8217;s pole is pointing towards or away from the Sun during the day, the\u00a0arc the Sun travels\u00a0through will rise and fall during the year.<\/li>\n<li>Winter Solstice happens when\u00a0one of the Earth&#8217;s poles is far away from the Sun.<\/li>\n<li>It falls on\u00a0December 21 or 22 in the Northern Hemisphere and\u00a0June 20 or 21 in the Southern Hemisphere.<\/li>\n<li>The word solstice is derived from the Latin word solstitium, where &#8216;sol&#8217; means Sun and &#8216;stitium&#8217; means to stop.<\/li>\n<li>During the winter solstice, the\u00a0days are the shortest.\u00a0The duration of daylight will\u00a0vary across countries.<\/li>\n<li>The winter solstice is\u00a0significant in many cultures since it marks the symbolic death and rebirth of the Sun.\u00a0Ancient monuments like Stonehenge are aligned with the sunrise or sunset on the\u00a0winter solstice.<\/li>\n<li>December\u2019s winter solstice:\n<ul>\n<li>It is when the\u00a0northern half of the Earth is\u00a0tilted furthest away from the sun.<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0northern hemisphere will experience the\u00a0fewest hours of sunlight, making it the\u00a0shortest day\u00a0of the year while the night is the longest.<\/li>\n<li>Every day after the winter solstice will grow longer\u00a0in the northern hemisphere\u00a0until its summer solstice, or the longest day of the year, between\u00a0June 20 and 22.<\/li>\n<li>The event will also\u00a0coincide with the peak of the Ursid meteor shower, an annual display that occurs over the northern hemisphere when the Earth passes through debris left by the comet 8P\/Tuttle.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is the Summer solstice?<\/h3>\n<p>It occurs when one of Earth&#8217;s poles is tilted toward the sun at its most extreme angle, and due to Earth&#8217;s tilt, this happens twice a year. In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice falls in June (while the Southern Hemisphere experiences the winter solstice), and in the Southern Hemisphere, it falls in December (while the Northern Hemisphere experiences the winter solstice).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ndtv.com\/india-news\/winter-solstice-2023-india-set-to-witness-shortest-day-of-the-year-today-heres-why-4720105\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>India Set To Witness Shortest Day Of The Year Today, Here&#8217;s Why<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":18480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}