The Sun close to furthest "south"

Event Date: December 18th

Time: 12:05(.45) PM

Brief

  We are just a few days from the December solstice.  During these days, the Sun barely moves south anymore at all, and we see it transiting at nearly the same position in the sky each day.  The only other difference with each transit, is that each is seconds earlier than the day before.  About a week and a half ago, transit was just a couple of seconds from exactly 12 noon, at our global location.  It transits at the time above, today, and will do so a bit later each day through February 10th.  It is about that time of the winter that the number of minutes/seconds of the Sun rising earlier, catches up with the minutes/seconds that it sets later.  Between then and about mid-May, our mornings become lighter faster than our evenings, and this patter alternates during other weeks of the year.

   For now, here is the image showing the celestial meridian, ecliptic and ecliptic grid.  The sky is darkened to show the lines better.

click on image to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp.

Detailed

   Notice above on either side of the Sun, the ecliptic (thinner green line marking the Sun's path) seems parallel with the horizon (not shown by line) and almost parallel with the celestial equator.  This indicates that the Sun, as mentioned earlier, has almost no where to go but north again, which it will seconds after reaching the solstice; this is marked by ecliptic longitude 270º to the Sun's left, numerically labeled at the image's top edge.  At the far left and right sides of the image, where the equator curves downwards towards the ecliptic, that is where the Sun is moving north and south (left and right edges respectively) more quickly.  The image is not zoomed out enough to show the entire half of the sky, or if I did that, it would show where the equator and ecliptic meet for the equinoxes.  After the December solstice, we will look at this, as the Sun's path takes it north very slowly during the first 30 days, and then increasingly faster between late January and mid-March, up to the date of the equinox.