India To Witness Shortest Day Of The Year Today, This is The Reason

In many countries of the world, long days are being said goodbye with the onset of winter. Friday will be the longest night of the year in India. This amazing event is called the Winter Solstice. It occurs every year on 21 or 22 December. With this comes a big change in the season.

The winter solstice occurs each year when the Northern Hemisphere moves away from the Sun and results in the longest night and shortest day of the year. The Earth is tilted on its axis by 23.4 degrees. Because of this, if the Earth's pole points towards or away from the Sun during the day, the circle within which the Sun moves increases and decreases during the year. The winter solstice occurs when the Northern Hemisphere is at minimum, or when the Sun is at its lowest point in the sky. The shortest day in India this year is December 22 and the solstice will occur at 8.57 am.

The shortest day of the year will be in the Northern Hemisphere with daylight lasting 7 hours and 14 minutes. A better way to witness this amazing phenomenon is to watch the sunrise and sunset on the day of solstice. The opposite of the winter solstice is the summer solstice, which occurs when there are longer hours of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere.

American space agency NASA has informed that the Sun is going through its 11-year solar cycle and is in a very active phase. Due to this, incidents like Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) and Solar Flare are happening in it. These incidents may continue till 2025. Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are large clouds of solar plasma. After a solar explosion, these clouds spread in space in the Sun's magnetic field. Due to their rotation in space, they expand and often reach a distance of several lakhs of miles. They can also collide with the magnetic fields of the planets. When their direction is towards the Earth, they can cause geomagnetic disturbances. Due to these, short circuits can occur in satellites and the power grid can also be affected.