THE COASTAL ADVENTURER WINTER WARMER

ast month we explored the ‘celestial sphere’ and learnt how it affects what we see in the night sky. But it influences our days too; once a year, the sun makes a complete orbit around this sphere, a journey we call its ‘ecliptic’. Throughout this annual migration, the sun’s declination (position north or south of the equator) rises and falls, being most northerly at the June Solstice (23° north) and most southerly at the December solstice, when it drops to 23° south. The biggest effect this has on us, far to the north, is that the mid-day sun is much lower in the sky – just 17° above the horizon, as opposed to 63° above the horizon in June. The days are also much shorter; at the end of December the sun does not rise until 8am