The winter solstice - when is the longest night please?

Question

It's the shortest day (UK) today, but I'm pondering on the question of which is the longest night: last night, or tonight? Does last night and today make a day, or does today and tonight make a day? If that makes sense?! Could you explain why your answer is so please? Many thanks!

Answer 1

Hi Femme!

The longest night is tonight, the night of the solstice December 21-22. (The date would be different in the western Pacific, such as in Australia, by the way, due to the effect of time zones.)

The exact time of the solstice is shortly after 1 a.m. Eastern Time tomorrow morning, the 22nd, here in New York (after 6 a.m. GMT in England). This is the longest night.

According to timeanddate.com, day's length yesterday the 20th of December (in the Western Hemisphere) was 9 hours 15 minutes 8 seconds long (here in New York; the day's length varies according to your latitude, but the principle applies equally at every Northern Hemisphere latitude). Today and tomorrow, the day will be only 9 hours 15 minutes 4 seconds long. On Sunday the 23rd, the day will grow back to 9 hours 15 minutes 8 seconds again.

Thus tonight, the night of the 21st-22nd, will be 14 hours 44 minutes 52 seconds long (at New York, but the principle is the same everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere), the longest of the year. The nights of the 20th-21st and 22nd-23rd will each be shorter by four seconds.

By the way, the shortest day is not the same as the earliest sunset, which came here in New York on December 8th, nor the latest sunrise, which won't happen until January 4th. (These dates would differ by several days in England.) Those are another story!

Answer 2

Technically the winter solstice is an instant intime, when the Sun is (inthe Northern hemisphere) at its most southerly. It is usually applied to the day on which that happens, which means that by definition the day of the solstice is the shortest day, not the longest night. The solstice lies somewhere between 21st and 23rd December - it varies year by year. This year it is at 6:09 GMT on 22nd December, so for Europe and the Eastern seaboard its tomorrow.

The longest night may be the preceding or subsequent night. The day length is longer by the same amount either side of teh moment of the solstice, which in principle means if the solstice lies post noon the subsequent night will be the longest etc. This is made more complex by the annalemma, which means that the dawn continues to get later until around 4th or 5th January.

Sorry the answer is so complex - its just the way the Solar system is.

Answer 3

Well a day can only have two parts, day and night, and they have to add up to one day full 24 hour day, so I say that whatever 24 hour period has the shortest day must also have the longest night. So the only question would be, is it the night before or after the shortest day that is longest? In theory, it could sometimes be a tie, with two longest nights, right?

The U.S. Naval Observatory gives sunrise and sunset at 0 degrees longitude and 51 degrees north latitude as:
Dec 20
Sunrise 08:00
Sunset 15:55
Dec 21
Sunrise 08:01
Sunset 15:55
Dec 22
Sunrise 08:01
Sunset 15:56
So the night starting at sunset Dec 20 and ending at sunrise Dec 21 is the same length as the one starting at sunset Dec 21 and ending at sunrise Dec 22. They don't give times to the second though, so I bet they are not EXACTLY the same.

Answer 4

Solstice occurs at 6:08 UT on December 22, 2007. The shortest night is one whose LOCAL midnight is closest to that time -- which in your case (UK) means the night of December 21-22.

For other observers -- those in Taiwan, for example -- the solstice at 0608 UT occurs at 1408 local on the 22nd, so the longest night for them would be the 22nd-23rd.

Answer 5

It's tonight. The daylight hours are fewer than any of the rest of the days during the year. The hours of darkness are a combination of dawn and dusk beginning at 12:00:00 am and ending when the sun rises and then again when the sun sets and ending at 11:59:59. So it's a little bit of "last night" - while you were assumably sleeping from midnight to sunrise - and tonight from sundown till midnight. Does that make sense to you?

Answer 6

Tonight 21-12 is the longest night. It is the winter equinox

Answer 7

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Answer 8

Tonight. Technically (& officially) the shortest day is tomorrow 22nd

Answer 9

Technically tonight.

Answer 10

The longest night is during the summer solstice which is June 21-22.