A solstice lasts only a moment. If you’re a person who’s tuned in to the out-of-doors, you know the peaceful, comforting feeling that accompanies these signs and signals of the year’s longest day. At the summer solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is most at its farthest north and tilted toward the sun. In 2025, the solstice moment will fall at 10:42 p.m. on June 20 for us in eastern North America.  

For all of Earth’s creatures, nothing is so fundamental as the length of the day. After all, the sun is the ultimate source of almost all light and warmth on Earth’s surface. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you might notice the early dawns and late sunsets, and the high arc of the sun across the sky each day. You might see how high the sun appears in the sky at local noon. And, also be sure to look at your noontime shadow. Around the time of the solstice, it’s your shortest noontime shadow of the year.

For us in the modern world, the solstice is a time to recall the reverence and understanding that early people had for the sky. Some 5,000 years ago, people placed huge stones in a circle on a broad plain in what’s now England and aligned them with the June solstice sunrise. Around the same time Stonehenge was being constructed in England, two great pyramids and then the Sphinx were built on Egyptian sands. If you stand at the Sphinx on the summer solstice and gazed toward the two pyramids, you’d see the sun set exactly between them . Photo