Polar night: Weeks without seeing the Sun

With the winter solstice only days away many of us are already longing for longer days.

The short daylight hours and long periods of darkness, can be a struggle for many of us and in polar regions the time spent without seeing any sunshine can extend over months rather than just hours.

Due to the tilt of Earth, areas around the Arctic in winter are pointing away from the Sun and there comes a point when it dips below the horizon and does not rise again until later in the season or even early spring.

This period of consecutive days without sunshine is called the polar night.

It is not completely dark throughout, though. At times the Sun is just below the horizon and due to the way light is scattered through the atmosphere you can get a magical twilight illuminating the sky – think about those moments just before a sunrise or immediately following a sunset.

Of course, at the same time as polar regions in the northern hemisphere are in a state of continuous night, those in the southern hemisphere are experiencing their polar day – a period of prolonged daylight in which the Sun doesn’t ever fully set – before roles are reversed in the northern summer and southern winter.