Those super long June days in Northern Ireland are getting shorter again, as we pass the summer solstice

​It was the summer solstice today, which is most often on June 21 but sometimes on June 20 or June 22.

Tonight at 9.50pm, roughly when the picture above was taken, was the exact point at which the north pole is most tilted towards the sun.

It means that the days will gradually get shorter all the way until the winter solstice on December 21, six months from now.

Katherine Doherty and her cousin Niamh Doherty from the Ormeau Road in Belfast outside the city hall in bright daylight at just before 10pm on the longest day of the year, Thursday June 20 2024. The sun sets at 10.03pm but it is mostly bright until approaching 11pm. Pic by Ben Lowry

There is no need to get too gloomy about it – the reduction in the number of daylight hours will be barely noticeable until the latter part of the summer. Also, the best two months of the year lie ahead, July and August. But the brightest part of the year is in decline.

The pictures on this page show Belfast city centre taken at two points yesterday. The top image was taken about 15 minutes before sunset at 10.03pm. The top image was taken shortly after 1.30pm, at close to the midpoint in daylight hours – the highest point in the day for the sun, on the day we are most tilted towards the sun.

The News Letter asked Katherine Doherty and her cousin Niamh Doherty, seen heading home to Ormeau Road in the top picture, if they knew it was the longest day.

"We actually thought the 21st was the longest day of the year, so there you go," said Katherine. "It is amazing that it is still bright at near 10 o'clock at night.”

Belfast city centre at around 130pm on the longest day of the year at the point in the day when the sun is at its highest in the sky, on June 20 2024. Picture by Ben Lowry

Niamh said: "It seems more like 7pm.”

Northern Ireland is unusually far north at 54 degrees latitude for Belfast – most of Europe is south of us, and almost the entirety of mainland United States, with the exception of the state of Alaska is below us too (and even the most southerly parts of Alaska are south of the most northerly parts of Northern Ireland).

The most northerly part of NI, Benbane Head, is 55 degrees N. Only a handful of major European cities are north of that, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, Riga in Latvia, and the Scandinavian capitals such as Helsinki.

Being several hundred miles north of London means that we get an extra 43 minutes of daylight in the evening. The sun set at 9.21pm in London last night, but 10.03pm in Belfast. Overall, we get a mammoth 17 hours and 16 minutes of daylight yesterday, starting at 4.47am. But it seems even more because at this time of year there is a long lead-in to sunrise and a long exit from sunset so it in fact seems to be mostly daylight from around 4am to around 11pm.

It also never gets truly dark, although it might seem like it does. But there are normally three stages of twilight: civil twilight, which is dawn and dusk, the period just before sunrise and the period just after sunset. Then there is nautical twilight and astronomical twilight when it is to all intents and purposes dark but in fact not entirely so.

If you go up a hill in Belfast it might seem fully dark partly due to the artificial light distorting your sense of the sky, and also if there is cloud cover. But there are only six nights around the June solstice where Northern Ireland never moves beyond nautical twilight, not getting to the next stage astronomical twilight, let alone the last stage of night time.

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor