Happy Solstice! Starting tomorrow, you’ll get one more second of light

It’s the shortest day of the year — or the longest night, whichever you prefer. Either way, astronomer Alice Enevoldsen joined KUOW’s Angela King to talk about the winter solstice.

Angela King: Just what is solstice, beyond the shortest day of the year?

Alice Enevoldsen: “Sol” means sun and “stice” means stop. So it's the sun stops -- the sun stops disappearing. For the last few months, the sun has been getting lower and lower in the sky when it's at its highest point and so we've been getting less and less sun. It's been setting farther and farther south, and that stops today. Tomorrow it starts to go the other direction. It starts to set a little farther north, it starts to rise a little farther north. We get a little bit more daylight. It comes up a little bit higher in the sky in the middle of the day, and that will go on until the summer solstice, at which point it stops again and reverses direction.

A lot of folks want to know: When do we get our sunlight back? Tomorrow?

Unfortunately not. Even though the Earth's pace as it goes around the sun is more or less steady, the amount of daylight we gain changes throughout the year. So right around the solstice it's changing by mere seconds. So tomorrow we will have a second more daylight. You're not going to notice that. But around the equinox, we're gaining or losing -- depending on which equinox -- about four minutes a day.

That's the reason we have winter celebrations: All of them are based on this hope that the sun is going to come back. Hanukkah has the candle. On Christmas and Yule we put lights out, we have a yule log fire, we put lights on a tree, we decorate our houses. And these are all just changes over the years of celebrations from back when we thought you had to celebrate in order to bring the sun back. And now we celebrate in order to give ourselves a little more light, a little more joy during this dark, dark time.

Did you know that Seattle has its very own mini-Stonehenge? It’s in West Seattle at Solstice Park. You can join Alice Enevoldsen there this afternoon at 3:45 to watch the sunset, weather permitting. Sunset is at 4:20 p.m. today.