The Reason for the Season

Before I discovered Blogspot I did my web logging on something called Live Journal, which was a bit less of a weblog than this but somewhat less of a social networking thing than Facebook. One of the things I did on my Live Journal page was compute and post astronomical data for the various solstices and equinoxes and other holidays for those who cared about such things.

Now, thanks to the excellent website maintained by the US Naval Observatory, I no longer have to actually compute anything; they do it all for us. But I'm going to continue the tradition anyway, as there are some folks following Strait of Magellan now who used to follow my old Live Journal page for times of upcoming astronomical events.

So, the solstice next week will be at 23:38 UTC on Tuesday 21 December 2010, which is 15:38 (3:38pm) pst. Sunset that day will be at 16:20 (4:20pm) pst in Seattle, that night will be the longest of the year, and the solstice sunrise will be at 07:55 pst the next morning. 

Happy Yule!