Today is winter solstice. Here in eastern US it occurs when the earth starts tilting back the other direction toward the sun at 4:48 pm EST.
I always love standing still, feeling gravity and all it's power, and thinking the earth keeps on turning, but somehow it stops its tilt like a top and turns the other way. There's a moment with tilt stop. That seems so incredible to my scientific mind.
But also my emotional intuitive self is dancing for the joy of less darkness and more light, which is of course the main feature of the earth leaning more southerly from it's north pole.
And so all these winter festivals also celebrate the returning of the light! In many manifestaions. Son and sun. Burning the yule log, and composting the leavings from our own dinners (no that's not a fesitval - yet)
Today's quote:
Happy solstice!
ReplyDeleteThanks, and the same to you!
Delete...personally I'm excited that the days will slowly get longer!
ReplyDeleteThat's definitely a good thing!
DeleteYes! What i feel is the stirring underground. The Oak King returns, and unseen by us the slow awakening will start. For a gardener, this is the excitement of this day. But what you said about the tilt of the earth, whoa. I never thought about that!
ReplyDeleteLove thinking of the Oak King. Definitely the ground and earth are alive, just waiting.
DeleteHappy Winter Solstice. Enjoy the return of the sun!
ReplyDeleteThanks, and I hope the earth stays settled down where you are. Simple season changes are quite enough!
DeleteThe sun is hanging in the south all day soon to start moving north again. Nice to see the sun this cold day.
ReplyDeleteI have enjoyed seeing it when I could too. Rain and maybe freezing on the ground tonight. So I went to get some essentials about an hour ago, with everyone else and his dog.
DeleteHappy Winter Solstice. I will enjoy the return of light, less darkness . Have a wonderful holiday week, Merry Christmas!
ReplyDeleteThanks Eileen. It will be so nice to have more sunshine...or at least more hours of daylight, slowly but surely. Happy Christmas to you and yours.
DeleteHappy Winter Solstice!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much, this old elf is enjoying today immensely!
DeleteWe are going through this again, are we? Sigh. The earth never changes its tilt.
ReplyDeleteLook it up. The earth is round, The earth rotates on its axis. The axis changes its relationship to the eliptical orbit around the sun slowly and constantly twice a year.
DeleteHah. You may be understanding or not but expressing it poorly. The tilt never changes, It is always the same 23,5 degrees. The way you express it, I am led to think that the earth changes its tilt. It doesn’t. The angle stays the same against the plane of the ecliptic. As the earth goes around the sun, at this time of year the Southern Hemisphere receives the direct rays. In summer the opposites occurs but not because the earth changes its orientation.
DeleteBTW, you may be mixing it up. The earth rotating on its axis gives is day and night. The earth revolving around the sun gives us the seasons.
To repeat: you may be understanding it correctly but just saying it so that it doesn’t seem like you do. Anyway, here is a short video just in case. https://youtu.be/WgHmqv_-UbQ
Not that this really matters. I am just clarifying because I thought we had covered this a few years ago and you seemed to get it then. I have taught this in school. I used to walk around the classroom holding the globe while a student would point the overhead projector at me. That physical demonstration seemed to work.
THanks AC...not sure stil how the earth can stay tilted at the same angle to it's orbit, but somehow receive sunlight differently. I guess I'm glad to know it's tilt doesn't change after all. A bit of an assumption on my part. So / is the tilt in winter and / is the tilt in summer, from the angle of the orbit.
DeleteHey AC...my visual way of learning would certainly have appreciated you walking around with a globe and a spot light. Let me see if I've got it yet. The angle always points the same direction as the earth rotates daily, and as it moves along it's orbit of the sun. So when the angle has the bottom of the globe pointed to the sun, it's summer in the southern hemisphere. And moving a quarter of the way around the orbit, the angle still points the same direction, but now the sides (north and south) of the earth get equal amounts of light from the sun...thus either spring or fall. And when it ends up on the opposite side from where we started...the bottom of the globe is now pointed away from the sun at the same angle, with the top getting more light...thus northern hemisphere has summer. I can't believe it's designed this way. I really liked my theory!! Maybe some other planet somewhere...
DeleteYeah. I think you’ve got it. The tilt is constant, but as we revolve around the sun the relationship is different (hard to express). Take your left hand and put it on the right side of your head with the bottom (wrist) tilted toward you and the top ( fingers) pointed away. Bring you hand around front to your left side without changing how your hand is tilted. Now your fingers are pointed toward your head while the wrist is pointed away.
ReplyDeleteWhat works best for me (those hands and wrists left me all tangled up)...is to see the eliptical plane as just that...like a plastic form that the earth travels on...and to imagine the tilt as the earth's feet and head. Always tilted the same, but as it moves on that invisible plastic plane, the feet will move in relation to the sun, sometimes pointed toward it, sometimes away from it.
Delete