Winter Solstice, Ursid Meteors 2019: When To Watch In NoVA, DC

WASHINGTON, DC — The winter solstice — the darkest day of the year, but also the celestial holiday celebrated through the ages as the beginning of light — arrives in northern Virginia at 11:19 p.m. Eastern Time Saturday. We saw nine hours and 26 minutes of sunlight on this first day of winter, and every day after adds daylight.

For anyone stretching their winter solstice revelry into the night, here's a bonus: The Ursid meteor shower peaks overnight Saturday and Sunday. The Ursids are a minor meteor shower with only 10 to 20 shooting stars an hour, but a nearly moonless sky translates into excellent viewing conditions in New England, depending on the weather.

The National Weather Service is forecasting a mostly clear Saturday night, with a low of 30 degrees.

The best time to watch for Ursids meteors, produced by debris dropped by the periodic comet 8P/Tuttle, is in the early hours Sunday. Ursids appear to radiate in the sky above the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor) near Polaris, but shooting stars can appear anywhere in the sky.

The winter solstice occurs at the 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 in June, after which the days start getting shorter again.

On the winter solstice, the sun seems to stand still directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, which is 23.5 degrees south of the equator. During the summer solstice, which occurs in June, the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer.

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 important 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, and 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."

Several of the rituals associated with Christmas — dinner feasts, gift-giving and decorative wreaths, for example — 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. In early December, true solar noon occurs 10 minutes earlier on the clock 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. A secondary but another contributing factor to this discrepancy between clock noon and sun noon comes from the Earth's elliptical — oblong — orbit around the sun.

"The Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, and when we're closest to the sun, our world moves fastest in orbit. Our closest point to the sun — or perihelion – comes in early January. So we are moving fastest in orbit around now, slightly faster than our average speed of about 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) per second. The discrepancy between sun time and clock time is greater around the December solstice than the June solstice because we're nearer the sun at this time of year."