Winter Solstice: Longest Night of Year 2020 passes as days growing longer

KARACHI: The longest night of the year 2020 passed, having a duration of more than 13 and a half hours here, quoting the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), ARY NEWS reported on Tuesday.

The night between December 21 and 22 was the longest night of the year as the sun rises this morning at 7:12 am, making it a night spanning over 13 hours and 37 minutes.

The met office has said that the shortest day of the year was also witnessed earlier on December 21 as it spanned over 10 hours and 23 minutes.

On December 21, 2020, the winter solstice, the world also witnessed planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. The double-planet spectacle sighted at the southwestern horizon in the sky.

For six months, the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer in the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth.

The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, when the sun appears at its most southerly position.

The situation is the reverse in the Southern Hemisphere. There, the December solstice marks the longest day of the year, and the beginning of summer in places such as Argentina, Australia and South Africa.

Because the Earth is tilted on its rotational axis, man experience seasons. As the Earth moves around the sun, each hemisphere experiences winter when it’s tilted away from the sun and summer when it’s tilted toward the sun.

The difference of hours between day and night at winter solstice remains at some places like Singapore, just 137 kilometers or 85 miles north of the equator, barely noticeable, with just nine less minutes of daylight than they have during the summer solstice.

The difference however stark at St. Petersburg in Russia, where the sun rises at 10 am and set at 3:53 pm resulting in less than six hours of the daylight.