The summer solstice can occur any (cualquier) day between 20th and 26th June. This year the summer solstice is on 21st June .
The solstice marks the peak of summer and takes place when the sun is at its highest point (el punto más alto) in the sky. After the solstice , the days get shorter until the winter solstice on December 21 when they start to get longer again
This year 2013, the solstice began in the east coast of the US at 1.04 am, but it will begin on Thursday night in places west of the Central Time Zone.
The summer solstice has been celebrated since ancient times and people still flock to prehistoric monuments like Stongehenge in Wiltshire to view (ver) the sunrise (el amanecer)
St. John’s Eve (or Bonfire (hoguera) Night) is on the evening of 23rd June and St. John’s Day, which is a holiday in many places such as (como) Spain or Quebec, is on the 24th. Midsummer festivals can be held(celebrados) at any time from mid-June to mid-July, which is also the peak tourist season (temporada alta de turismo) in many places.
This year, Saint John's Eve coincided with an extraordinary phenomenon: The Supermoon. A remarkable supermoon appeared on the night of the 23rd of June. A supermoon – also known as a “perigee” moon – occurs when the moon is full and its orbit is closer than normal to the Earth. Because it is closer to us, the moon appears up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than normal. The supermoon of the 23rd of June was the biggest supermoon this year and presented a spectacular sight if you watched at the skies, and your view wasn't obscured by clouds. What makes this supermoon even more powerful than usual is it falls on St. John’s Eve.
St. John’s Eve is a sacred time for voodoos and hoodoos (magia negra), particularly in New Orleans. St John’s Eve falls on the night of June 23rd, the evening before St. John the Baptist’s Day. The legendary voodoo queen of New Orleans, Marie Laveaux (1794-1881), used to hold wild and raucous (estridentes) voodoo ceremonies on the night of June 23rd on Bayou St. John.
To finish this post, we would like to show you a video with an explanation of this marvellous phenomenon:
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