But the winter solstice is also the shortest day and longest night of the year, when the distance between sunrise and sunset is at its shortest. That means the sun will rise at 7:10 a.m. and set at 4:14 p.m. on Saturday, giving New Englanders just 9 hours, 4 minutes and 35 seconds of daylight.

While the winter solstice gives us the fewest hours of sunlight, it also represents the turning point at which we lose and gain sunlight. From Sunday, December 22nd, we will slowly get daylight again – initially in the afternoon, and from the beginning of January also in the morning.

The rate of this daylight increase will increase over time, reaching a maximum near the vernal equinox (March 20, 2025) – when the sun appears directly over the equator, giving us about 12 hours of daylight – before slowly tapering off again over the summer Zero goes solstice (June 20, 2025). And then the whole process starts again.

Keep in mind that the earliest and latest sunrises and sunsets do not fall on the solstice. Due to Earth’s elliptical orbit, the earliest sunset is actually around December 8th (at 4:11 p.m.) and the latest sunrise is around January 4th. The latest sunset is around June 26th and the earliest sunrise is around June 14th.

Try this exercise to understand the winter solstice and all seasons a little better. Take a pencil in your right hand and make a fist with your left. Your fist represents the sun; the pencil is the earth. Hold the tip of the pencil upright and tilt it toward your fist. Now you are at the summer solstice.

Note that the tip is aimed at your fist. The other end of the pencil, the eraser, has tipped away – this is winter in the southern hemisphere.

Now hold the pencil in the same position and move it to the left, to the other side of the sun (first). Note that the point is now pointing away. This is where we find ourselves at the winter solstice, when we get the least amount of daylight.

Because the Earth is tilted at 23½ degrees, our seasons and the enormous temperature differences between them are created. Interestingly, our orbit and the angle at which the Earth is tilted change over millennia, and these changes can be responsible for things like ice ages.