See the Solstice at Stonehenge as winter begins

When is the winter solstice? At sunrise this morning, around 15,000 people gathered at Stonehenge – the world’s most famous Neolithic monument – to mark the arrival of the astronomical winter in the northern hemisphere.

The 5,000-year-old stone circle in Wiltshire, England, UK sees an annual adjustment on the day of the solstice, with this year’s December 21 sunrise in the northeast just above the heel stone. The event was broadcast live on YouTube by English Heritage, where the global solstice moment follows shortly after 9:21am GMT (4:21am EST).

What does a solstice mean? The solstice moment occurs when the sun reaches its southernmost point directly above the Tropic of Capricorn. At this moment the sun appears to “stand still” before turning, a phenomenon reflected in the Latin roots of the word solstice – sol (sun) and sister (to stand still).

What happens on the solstice? The Sun rises in its farthest northeastern position on the year’s horizon on the date of the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.

Why is December 21st the winter solstice? December’s solstice occurs because Earth’s axis is tilted approximately 23.5 degrees relative to its orbit around the sun. On December 21, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted furthest away from the Sun, resulting in shorter daylight hours and colder temperatures. The sun appears lower in the sky and takes a shorter path through it.

This year, the event coincided with new research suggesting that Stonehenge may have been constructed as a unifying landmark in prehistoric times. The new theory posits that the monument’s stones, originating from distant regions, served as symbols of political alliances, possibly following unrest.

According to a paper published in Archeology Internationalrather than being a temple, a calendar, or an observatory—as many archaeologists have theorized—Stonehenge is political. “I think we just haven’t been looking at Stonehenge in the right way,” Mike Parker Pearson of University College London, the paper’s author, told The Guardian. “You really have to look at it all to figure out what they’re doing. They’re constructing a monument that expresses the permanence of certain aspects of their world.” Solstice adjustments may have a less important purpose.

Earlier this year, another scientific paper presented compelling evidence that Stonehenge’s central altar stone originally came from about 430 miles (700 kilometers) away in northern Scotland. In 2021, archaeologists pinpointed the origin of the stone circle’s smaller bluestone as Pembrokeshire in Wales, about 180 miles (290 kilometers) west of Stonehenge.

I wish you big eyes and clear skies.