What do we know about the day of the summer solstice?It has long been singled out by almost all the nations of the world, speaking a source of different beliefs.After all, the movement of the sun across the sky played a leading role in the planning of agricultural activities.From year to year there was the culmination of the behavior of light and there comes the longest day of the year.This phenomenon is attributed to a positive value in many cultures.
From the standpoint of science, this astronomical event is not particularly remarkable.Just from this time daylength begins to decrease, and the night becomes longer.For the northern hemisphere of the planet's longest daylight hours of the year always falls on the 20th or the 21st of June.In those days the shortest night of the year.
Earth, moving along the path of the closed elliptical orbit around the center of the system - the Sun, twice for light year reaches the farthest point from it.Needless solstice lasts only a moment.But all opened the longest day of the year calling this term.Second - the winter solstice - marks the offensive in the northern latitudes, the longest night and the shortest day of the year.It always comes at the end of December - 21 or 22 numbers.For the Southern Hemisphere the situation is reversed.In those days of June there observed the winter solstice, and in December - the summer.
From the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere of the planet, you can see that from the moment of the winter solstice sun every day is higher above the horizon.The highest point of the light reaches to the summer solstice, and then daily rises less high.Iedegree tilt of the Earth to the Sun in our maximum in June and minimum in December (for Moscow it is over 57 ° and about 11 °, respectively).
Ask how much lasts the longest day of the year?It will directly depend on the geographic coordinates of the place of observation.Accordingly, the lead angle of the sun above the horizon.For Moscow latitudes duration of the day is 17 hours and 34 minutes.It starts to get light in the 4-44 am and sunset takes place in the 22-18 pm.Krasnodar For the length of the long daylight hours of the year - almost 16 hours (not 20 minutes) to St. Petersburg - nearly 19 hours (not 10 minutes).
In northern latitudes, these days the sun does not set at all, bringing the polar day (66,4 ° and further to the north).
tradition of the celebration of the solstice have been developed in many nations.Read his ancient Slavs.Each year, the longest day of the year come the holidays, Midsummer, marks the end of spring and the arrival of summer.Then comes the celebration of the solstice, when there are three very long days in the year.All the festivities were dedicated to the distinguished Rus god - Perun.We emphasize and two astronomical milestones of the year - the days of autumn and spring equinox, when the length of the day is equal to the duration of the night.
I have from school entrenched not the most pleasant associations connected with the astronomical date of the solstice.Firmly etched in memory: in 1941, it was June 22, Nazi Germany suddenly attacked the USSR.The attack was preceded by the longest day of the year, and then came the Solstice.
However, according to the assumptions of some esoteric, it was an unfortunate choice of the date of Hitler's attack led to this collapse.The attack on the Union, to Russia in the days dedicated to the heavenly protector of the Slavs - god Perun, was the very first of his mistake.The Russian people with a help of divine thunder turned out to be simply unbeatable.
I do not know whether the right of mysticism.But perhaps all the nations of the world can not be wrong, and yet there is something sacred in the longest day of the year.
