The official transition from Fall to a new season arrived today at 7:04 Eastern time when the Winter Solstice took place in the Northern Hemisphere.

For the Southern Hemisphere it’s the Summer Solstice. In June, the next solstice will welcome new seasons again.

The arrival of the Winter Solstice was reason for celebration at special festivals in places like Stonehenge in England.

The Winter Solstice is also referred to as the shortest day (and longest night) of the year and occurs when the sun shines directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. For the Summer Solstice in June, the sun glistens over the Tropic of Cancer.

The reason for the different seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres is that as the Earth orbits around the Sun it also spins on its axis at a tilt of 23.5-degrees. That tilt delivers less direct sunlight to the Northern Hemisphere and more to the Southern Hemisphere.

Thanks to that tilt, the Northern Hemisphere gets less direct sunlight for the next six months and the Southern Hemisphere gets more.

Astronomically speaking, the solstices happen when the Sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator, which is on the same plane as the Earth’s equator.