Midnight Sunshine on Solstice

Some things in my life just never get old.

The long summer days that never become night just thrill me.

Every night.

I sometimes wake at 2 or 4 AM and go to the window to ponder the blue sky and soft clouds.

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The cycle of sunset and sunrise does actually occur.

It's like they almost overlap and you can't distinguish one from the other.

Mostly the sky is soft blues and pinks, but these pics are from the rainy night of Solstice when we were at that crazy midnight baseball game I just wrote about yesterday.

That's why the dark clouds are so distinctive.

Here is the sun beginning its descent.

It's amazingly long, often seeming to hover in the sky for hours, gliding along to the north,

then slowly and almost imperceptibly slipping downward.

Gradually it lowers until dipping just below and out of sight.

Called "civil twilight", this it the time when the sun is just at or 6 degrees below the horizon,

in other words, barely set.

On this, the longest day of the year, civil twilight ends and begins at exactly the same time,

shortly after 2 AM.

Then, in less than an hour after civil twilight begins, sunrise occurs.

And the new day dawns, kissing the previous one goodnight as she passes.

For me, this never gets old.