THE longest day in the Philippines will take place during the solstice on June 21, with Batanes experiencing the longest duration of daylight, according to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration.
On that day sunrise in Basco, Batanes’ capital, will occur at 5:21 a.m. and sunset will take place at 6:42 p.m.
That means the daytime in Batanes on that date will be 13 hours and 21 minutes long, said Dario dela Cruz, head of Pagasa’s Space Sciences and Astronomy Section.
“Batanes folk will have some extra time for day activities,” he said.
Pagasa said daytime in Basco was shorter during this year’s March equinox, when the duration of the day and night were almost equal as sunrise occurred at 6:04 a.m. and sunset at 6:11 p.m..
Solstices happen twice a year: Around June 21 when the sun is directly above the Tropic of Cancer and around Dec. 21 when it is over the Tropic of Capricorn.
Both tropics, the equator as well as the Arctic and Antarctic circles are the five major imaginary latitude lines circling Earth.
Batanes is the Philippine area nearest the Tropic of Cancer.
In the Northern Hemisphere where the Philippines is, the solstice in June is known as the summer solstice and it marks there the year’s longest day. That solstice is called the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere and marks the year’s shortest day there.
While daytime will be longest in Batanes during the solstice on June 21, Dela Cruz said, Tawi-Tawi in the south will experience the shortest day.
He said sunrise in Tawi-Tawi’s Batu-batu area on that day will occur at 5:49 a.m. while sunset will take place at 6:14 p.m., resulting in a daytime of 12.5 hours only.
“It’ll be night already in Tawi-Tawi while daylight will still be prevailing in Batanes,” Dela Cruz said.
But the daytime in the Central Philippines during the June solstice will be neither as long as Batanes’ nor as short as Tawi-Tawi’s.
According to Pagasa, the solstice this Wednesday will occur at 12:24 p.m.
“This event marks start of the apparent southward movement of the sun in the ecliptic,” the agency said.
The ecliptic is the imaginary line in the sky marking the sun’s annual path.