The winter solstice is today, bringing the shortest day and longest night of the year to the Northern Hemisphere.
As the official start of the astronomical winter, the sun reaches its most southerly point in the sky as seen from Earth. At noon, it appears directly overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn, located at a latitude of 23.5 degrees south. This position correlates to the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, which is tilted as far away from the sun as possible and, in turn, experiences the fewest hours of sunlight.
