Today is the shortest day of the year for the Southern Hemisphere, otherwise known as Winter Solstice.
Winter Solstice is scheduled to occur at 9:13pm today, when the sun’s position in the sky reaches its farthest point north of the Equator. It means today will have the least amount of daylight of any day for the year.
In daylight hours today is 5 hours, 4 minutes shorter than the December solstice.
In locations south of the equator, the shortest day of the year is around this date. This equates to just nine hours, 37 minutes and 58 seconds, and in Invercargill, just eight hours, 35 minutes and 5 seconds worth of daylight.
Starting tomorrow, the days in the Southern Hemisphere will start to get longer and the moon larger, as the South Pole begins to tilt towards the sun.
During the Winter Solstice, there is no sunlight at all south of the Antarctic Circle – they have 24 hours of darkness.
