Solstice was yesterday but the setting sun later in the year is only in a week – Daily News – Lisbon

The summer started on a full moon night, something that had not happened for nearly 70 years. But desenganem if that think yesterday was the longest day of the year because the day has exactly the same time sunlight

Fourteen hours, 49 minutes, six seconds. In the northern hemisphere, this is precisely the time of sunlight of today. As yesterday, the summer solstice, the sun rises at 6:12 and sets up to 21.05, which makes these two days the longest of the year. But it is a minimal difference, since tomorrow is lost only three seconds of sun. From now on, the days will start getting smaller, but next week it gets dark later. On Monday and Tuesday, the Sun born a minute later and put to the 21:06.

“The central point of the Sun has been moving away from the equator and reaches its peak today [ yesterday] evening at 23:34. Now go down in latitude and approach the equator, “explains Rui Agostinho, director of the Astronomical Observatory of Lisbon (OAL). As the summer solstice occurred very close to midnight, said the astronomer, the period of sunlight today is exactly the same as yesterday. On Sunday, for example, there was least two seconds of sunlight, while tomorrow accrued least three. “By this time, the sun reaches the highest latitude and varies very little from day to day, which is that the day durations are not very different,” says the expert.

An interesting data indicates Rui Agostinho, is that when it is considered that the sun is putting he has set. “When we see a patch of sun touches the horizon, it is now all below the horizon,” a phenomenon that is related to the effects of atmospheric refraction.

Yesterday, the solstice was special because which coincided with the full moon of June, some tribes of North America called straw-berry moon, or in Portuguese, strawberry moon as it marks the beginning of the harvest of this fruit. Since the summer of 1967 the two phenomena did not happen on the same day, which made yesterday’s event even more rare and special. “One might think that there is a cosmic conspiracy to it, but it’s just a coincidence. Occasionally happens”, says the director of the OAL.

As usual, thousands of people gathered yesterday at Stonehenge in the UK, to watch the summer solstice, right from the sunset. With more than four thousand years, the monument is formed by a set of rocks, and is on the main stone is born the Sun, which provides a unique spectacle.

summer arrived with sun and heat

summer came yesterday and lasts until the next equinox, which, according the Centre takes place on 22 September at 15:21. After a spring marked by rain, the solstice brought the sun and high temperatures, although in some areas of the country may occur precipitation this week.

According to Madalena Rodrigues, a meteorologist at the Portuguese Institute ocean and Atmosphere (IPMA), the sky remains “little cloudy or clear” during the day, only with some cloudiness in the northern and central coast, which may persist until the end of the morning. As for Wednesday, is likely to occur some instability and even showers and thunderstorms in the north and center of the country.

Across the country, temperatures should remain hovering around 30 degrees, reaching 37 in Alentejo. For Thursday and Friday, Madalena Rodrigues says it is expected a small decrease of the maximum temperature, which goes back up next weekend.

According to the IPMA data, the month of March was cooler than normal, with the average temperature the lowest of the past 31 years and the 13th lowest since 1931. April was also an atypical month to what is normal in the spring. Was “extremely wet”, with the average rainfall was almost double the normal (the top 10 since 1931), a trend that continued in the following month. In May, the value of the amount of rainfall was much higher than average, and the 5th highest since 1931 and the highest in 22 years.