The solstice looms, on June 21. Last time, I called it the Sunstanding, which is what “solstitium” means: the Sun stands, or stays, in the sense that it goes no farther north.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations. In this chart, the Sun is shown at true scale at each day, but with size exaggerated 3 times at the beginnings of months, 5 times at the solstice.
We know the Sun appears at this place in the celestial map, crossing the Taurus-Gemini border, but we know it indirectly, not by seeing the stars around it. I show a sample of them within 5 degrees of the solstice Sun, taken from the Hipparcos catalogue, which includes stars down to about magnitude 12. They are what you might see if you had a powerful telescope with a device to occult the Sun.
More likely to be findable, though better after the Sun has gone down, are the planets near the Sun. Mercury passed behind the Sun (superior conjunction) on May 14, is now about 23° from it and at magnitude 1.0. It is on June 21 at descending node through the ecliptic.
The ecliptic is the path of the Sun as we see it. The Sun remains in the ecliptic plane; what happens is not that the Sun has moved north but that Earth, in its orbit, comes to the point where its northern hemisphere most tilts south in relation to the Sun. So we might better call it the Earthnodding. As shown in the “Sun, Earth, and Seasons” pages of the Astronomical Calendar:
And the solstice point could be the capital of King Sol. He is there on a Sun Day, this year, but not always. More later about weekdays.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.
One way: right-click, and choose ”View image” or ”Open image in new tab”, then enlarge. Or choose ”Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version. Or, if you click ‘Refresh’ or press function key 5, you’ll see the version change to the latest.