Summer solstice

Sunset at 9:55 p.m. EDT, June 20, 2009

These photographs are offered in homage to the summer solstice, the point at which the sun sets and rises at its farthest north, and of Father's Day. Somehow they make me wish to paint my face blue and run screaming naked into Lake Superior in salute to the pagan gods of nature, but the water is too cold and the biting flies too nasty for that kind of observance.

The last sliver of sun crept below the horizon at 9:57 p.m., seemingly astonishingly late, but Green, Michigan, is on Eastern time although it actually lies farther west than Chicago.

I wish I had arisen three minutes earlier to get the shot below so that the sun would have been at the same depth over the horizon as the one above, but the dog did not nudge me awake in time.

For hairsplitters, the precise time of the solstice arrived at 0545 Zulu June 21, or 1:45 a.m. EDT. Thus the two photographs neatly bracket the witching hour, no?

Click on either photo for a larger, more detailed version.


Sunrise at 5:45 a.m. EDT, June 21, 2009