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The winter solstice takes place on Monday. The duration of the day will be 8 hours and 50 minutes, and the longest night of the year will be marked by a spectacular phenomenon: the planets Jupiter and Saturn will apparently approach each other, being visible as a double star.
The beginning of the astronomical winter is marked by a specific event, namely the winter solstice, which in 2020 takes place on December 21, at 12:02 m, although we have become accustomed to delimiting from a meteorological point of view, the winter season of the previous one. , fall, December 1.
This year, the winter solstice is marked by a very close conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn.
The two planets will apparently move closer to each other, being visible as a double star in the evening sky. The phenomenon can be seen with the naked eye, on December 21, very close to the western horizon.
In Bucharest, the Sun will set at 4:49 pm, and after 5 pm the planets can be seen with the naked eye, until 7 pm, when they set, according to the Astronomical Observatory “Admiral Vasile Urseanu”.
The next time Jupiter and Saturn can see each other this close will be in 2080.
A not-so-close conjunction will occur on October 31, 2040, the planets will be visible before sunrise.
The next time the two planets are this close to each other will be on March 15, 2080, when they will meet before dawn in the constellation Capricorn.
The winter solstice is related to the apparent annual movement of the Sun in the celestial sphere, which is the consequence of the actual movement of the Earth around the Sun. At the same time, the summer solstice occurs in the southern hemisphere.
Solstice means “still sun”, currently in the southern hemisphere of the celestial sphere, at a maximum angular distance of 23 ° 27 ‘south of the equator, making the diurnal movement along the circle parallel to the celestial equator, called the “Tropic of Capricorn “. “.
This explains, for the middle latitudes of the Earth, the inequality of days and nights, as well as the succession of seasons.
At noon the sun “rises” – taking into account the average latitude of our country, 45 ° – just 21 ° from the horizon.
A consequence of this astronomical event is the fact that we have the shortest day (illuminated by the sun, eight hours and 50 minutes) and the longest night of the year (15 hours and 10 minutes, for Bucharest), according to www.astro – urseanu.ro.
Romanian customs around the winter solstice
Romanian customs around the winter solstice preserve the memory of the violent sacrifice of the adored god, replacing it with the sacred tree, fir or oak, symbolically cut and cremated on Christmas night, with the bull, represented by a mask, Capra, Brezaia, Ţurca, who, after accompanying some groups of Christmas carols, is symbolically killed and, especially, with the pig, a Neolithic representation of the spirit of wheat, ritually sacrificed to the Ignatian Pigs (December 20).
The first written reference to a holiday marking the return of the Sun (solstice) was found in ancient times in Mesopotamia.
The 12-day festival was meant to help the god Marduk tame the monsters of chaos for another year.
Hundreds of megalithic structures are dedicated to the solstice throughout Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East.
Even the peoples who observed the lunar calendar marked the two solstices in one way or another.
In Europe, stone constructions to measure the position of the Sun have been discovered at Stonehenge, England, and Newgrange, Ireland.
According to the researchers, the Stonehenge stones date from approximately 2050 BC. C. and it is assumed that they were placed so that the light of the setting sun on the date of the winter solstice fell in a certain way.
For pagans, this was the night that the Great Goddess gave birth to the new Sun, thus restarting the cycle of the seasons. On this day, the Romans celebrated Saturn, the god of crops, and Mitra, the god of light, according to the volume “Days and Myths: the Romanian Peasant’s Calendar”, by Ion Ghinoiu.
